Textern is a Firefox add-on that allows you to edit text areas in web pages using an external editor.
The add-on is divided into two parts:
- the WebExtension, which is available from AMO here, and
- the native application, which handles text editor launching and monitoring.
The native application currently only supports Linux with Python 3.5. Patches to add support for other platforms are welcome!
To clone the repository:
$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jlebon/textern
$ cd texternIMPORTANT: make sure that your git checkout includes
submodules (either use the --recurse-submodules when
running git clone as shown above, or use
git submodule update --init if already cloned).
To install the native app, run:
$ sudo make native-installTo uninstall it, run:
$ sudo make native-uninstallOn distros which do not use /usr/lib64 (such as
Debian/Ubuntu), you'll want to override LIBDIR:
$ sudo make native-install LIBDIR=/usr/libIf you do not have root privileges or wish to only install the native app for the current user, run:
$ make native-install USER=1Once both the WebExtension and the native application are installed, you can select any textbox and press Ctrl+Shift+D to open an external editor. The textarea will flash yellow upon launching the text editor, as well as whenever the file is saved.
By default, gedit is opened. You can change both the key mapping as well as the configured editor in the addon preferences. Additional parameters may be passed to the editor. For example:
["myeditor", "--custom-arg"]will launch myeditor --custom-arg /path/to/file.txt. You
may use %s as a variable for the file path if don't want
it to be the last argument.
If your editor supports it, you can also use %l and %c
to pass the line and column number of the caret position.
(The capitalized versions %L and %C also exist which are
smaller by one for text editors that count from zero). For
example, passing this information to gvim (or vim):
["gvim", "-f", "+set nofixeol", "+call setcursorcharpos(%l, %c)"]Example for emacs:
["emacs", "%s", "--eval", "(progn (goto-line %l) (move-to-column (1- %c)))"]If you would like to use a terminal editor such as vim or
emacs, you will need to modify the configuration such that
Textern starts a terminal emulator which runs the text
editor. For example, for nvim this could look like
["xterm", "-e", "nvim", "+call cursor(%l,%c)"]Here, xterm is the terminal emulator, -e instructs it to
start a program, which is nvim (the editor we're actually
interested in) with the given parameters.
This works similarly with konsole or gnome-terminal
instead of xterm. For example, starting vim with
gnome-terminal:
["gnome-terminal", "--wait", "--", "vim", "+call cursor(%l,%c)"]Note that by default the gnome-terminal process won't wait
for the spawned process to finish before exiting so you'll
need to make sure you add the --wait flag.
With konsole, you may need to ensure it runs in its own process
with the either the --separate or --nofork flag:
["konsole", "--separate", "-e", "vim", "+normal %lG%c|"]Non-terminal-based editors can also suffer from the same waiting problem described above. For example, gedit does not fork and thus can be used directly:
["gedit"]On the other hand, gvim by default will fork and detach.
One must thus make sure to pass the -f switch for it to
stay in the foreground:
["gvim", "-f"]Flatpak-packaged editors should work fine, as long as the
application has access to the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR directory.
For example, to use the GNOME gedit flatpak, use:
["flatpak", "run", "--filesystem=xdg-run/textern", "org.gnome.gedit"]Textern has experimental support for backing up text to a
separate location to allow recovering data inadvertently
lost by closing a tab or Firefox too soon. To enable this
feature, enter a path to the backup directory in the addon
preferences page. Note no shell expansion is performed on
the path (use e.g. /home/jlebon instead of ~).
All files older than 24 hours are deleted from the backup directory (i.e., not just those files that Textern created). If there are files in the directory that Textern fails to delete, then Textern will misbehave. For this reason, make sure the backup directory is exclusively used by Textern.
Note this feature is experimental and subject to change.
Some things to try if it doesn't work properly:
- Ensure you are running the latest version of Firefox
- Try configuring Textern to launch using a different shortcut
- Try configuring Textern to use the following as the external editor:
["sh", "-c", "echo foobar > $0"](that should just echo foobar into the textarea box) - Check the browser console for errors (Ctrl+Shift+J)
- Check the extension's console for errors (Go to
about:debugging, find Textern in the list of extensions, and click Inspect) - Make sure you cloned the repo with
--recurse-submodules(see installation instructions above) - Try re-installing but for your local user (
make native-install USER=1instead ofsudo make native-install) - Check if Textern is running in the background (
ps aux | grep textern)
Firejail is a sandboxing program to restrict what your browser can do. It will prevent Textern from working.
If you install Textern with USER=1, and your firejail instance is not using apparmor, then add to /etc/firejail/firejail.local:
whitelist ${HOME}/.local/libexec/textern/
noblacklist ${PATH}/python3*
noblacklist /usr/lib/python3*
If apparmor is enabled, then add the Python lines to firejail.local and see issue 52.
https://github.com/docwhat/itsalltext/
This is the project that inspired this add-on. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with WebExtensions and thus cannot be installed on Firefox 57 or later.
https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl
Generic addon that adds Vim-like bindings to Firefox,
including an :editor command which provides similar
functionality to Textern.
https://github.com/asamuzaK/withExEditor
Similar to Textern and supports WebExtensions. Native app is cross-platform but requires Node.js.
https://github.com/GhostText/GhostText
Uses editor-specific plugins to provide two-way on-the-fly sync between webpage and editor.