pluma

Start the editor

$ pluma

$ pluma [path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...]

$ pluma --encoding [WINDOWS-1252] [path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...]

$ pluma --list-encodings

$ pluma +[10] [path/to/file]

pluma [OPTIONS...] [FILES...]

--new-window
    Opens a new empty window.

--new-document
    Creates a new empty document in a new window.

--print
    Prints the specified file(s).

--encoding=ENCODING
    Sets the character encoding to use when opening files specified on the command line.

-s, --select=LINE:COLUMN
    Selects a range of text starting at the specified line and column. Useful for scripting.

--list-encodings
    Displays a list of all supported character encodings.

--version
    Displays the Pluma version information and exits.

--help
    Displays a brief help message with common command-line options.

Pluma is the official text editor for the MATE desktop environment, serving as a modern, easy-to-use graphical editor for general purpose text editing. It is a direct fork of the gedit editor from the GNOME 2 codebase, maintaining a similar interface and feature set that emphasizes simplicity and user-friendliness while offering powerful capabilities.

Designed primarily for plain text files, Pluma supports syntax highlighting for various programming languages, making it suitable for developers and programmers. Its tabbed interface allows for managing multiple documents efficiently within a single window. Key features include support for international character encodings, a flexible plugin system to extend functionality (e.g., spell checking, file browser pane, snippets), printing capabilities, and drag-and-drop support. It integrates seamlessly with the MATE desktop, providing a fast and reliable solution for editing notes, configuration files, source code, and more.

While Pluma is excellent for general-purpose text editing, it is not designed as a full-fledged IDE or for handling extremely large files (gigabytes). For very large files, specialized tools or command-line editors might offer better performance.

Its functionality is heavily integrated with the MATE desktop environment, meaning some features or integrations might not be fully functional or aesthetically consistent in other desktop environments.

Pluma features a robust plugin system that allows users to extend its functionality. This includes plugins for features like a file browser sidebar, snippets, document statistics, spell checking, and more. Plugins can be enabled or disabled via the 'Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins' menu within the editor.

One of Pluma's core features is its extensive syntax highlighting support. It automatically detects and highlights syntax for a wide array of programming languages and markup formats, significantly improving readability for code and configuration files. Users can also manually set the highlighting mode.

Pluma emerged from the GNOME 2 desktop environment's text editor, gedit. When GNOME 3 was released with its new GNOME Shell interface, a group of users and developers decided to fork the GNOME 2 codebase to create the MATE desktop environment, aiming to preserve the traditional desktop paradigm. As part of this effort, gedit was forked and renamed to Pluma to serve as the default text editor for MATE.

Since its inception, Pluma has continued to be actively developed, maintaining compatibility with modern Linux systems while retaining the familiar interface and feature set of its gedit predecessor, ensuring a stable and user-friendly experience for MATE users.

gedit(1), nano(1), vi(1), emacs(1)