XML Tree Editor version 0.1.0.23

The last version of tree view XML editor features drag and drop for Replicate / Move node operations and some minor improvements.

As usually installation files for Windows and Ubuntu can be found SourceForge.Net along with the source code.

XML Tree Editor ver 0.1.0.15 released

Last week I released the latest version of XML Tree Editor - a tool for creating/editing XML files represented as tree views.

New version features some bug fixes as well as improved usability and simplicity. Full release notes can be found on the project download page.

Installation packages are provided for Windows XP/7/8 and Ubuntu/Debian Linux. There is also source code avaialble for download along with two Pascal units for developers. The units provide support for XML configuration files in Delphi (uXMLConfig.pas) and Lazarus/Free Pascal (xmlfile.pas) applications. They are pretty much similar to well-known INI files with much richer functionality. The project is licensed under terms of GPL 2.0 or higher license.

Project page at SourceForge.net is http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmltreeeditor

XML Tree Editor

I published a new small project recently called XML Tree Editor. It's an utility, which represents an XML file in a treeview and allows creating and editing it in this mode, without dealing with XML syntax.
The screenshot below shows the main screen with the tree view and preview pane at the bottom, Edit node window and multi-line editor on the foreground.

The list of commands includes Add Child Node (as reference to the selected node on the tree), Add Above and Add Below, Add Comment, Edit Node (which applies to both XML tags and comments) and Delete Node. There is also commands to move node with all its child nodes to a new position and to replicate (clone) nodes.

The second XML file can be opened in read-only mode in the separate window at the same time; it's called Reference File. The whole node (with all its children) can be copied from this file into main editable XML document.

This is an open source free software, hosted at SourceForge.net. The application is developed in Lazarus Free Pascal, the source codes are available for download along with installation packages for Windows and Linux (GTK2+).

Starting a new project at work I became the active user of XML Tree Editor myself. So I discovered some areas of improvement. The proposed changes in the emerging new version 0.1.0.15, apart from minor bug fixes, will include:

• show all parents of the selected node mode
• options window
• keyboard shortcuts for all actions

XML Tree Editor available for download from here.

Gnome Debian Package Finder

Gnome Package Finder is my first project in Lazarus released to the public. It is also my first published program for Ubuntu Linux or other distributions, using Debian packages.

Unlike Synaptic Package Manager, which is the main tool in Ubuntu to deal with installed and avaialble from repositories (Software Sources) packages, Gnome Package Finder only provides information about packages, it can neither install nor remove the package, and because of this, it does not require administative rights to work. It also works about twice faster for the same search.

Gnome Package Manager allows to search through package names, their short or long descriptions for the given model. The matching packages are shown in the list, which indicates also the state of the installed packages. Another possibility is to search for a file name inside the packages. This search takes much longer and the output contains package names and the full path to the matching files, in case they were installed.

When one got the list of packages, for every one in the list common information about the package can be obtained, along with its dependencies and the list of files, this package would install.



Keyboard shortcuts provide an easy way to navigate and perform all operations without involving the mouse. The help system covers most of what you may want to know about Gnome Package Finder.

The installation binary package as well as the source files can be downloaded from:
http://www.gtk-apps.org/.

It is released under the terms of Gnu General Public Licence (GPL).

uHuman-soft Metacity theme

This is my first Linux project. I like default Ubuntu theme called Human, but always thought it would be even nicer if I were able to choose my own colours. So after learning about creating metacity and GTK themes I started to play with the theme called "ish" by bvc (http://www.guistyles.com/gnome-styles/). Then I compared my results with the default Ubuntu theme and found that the latest takes three times less to be rendered. So I abandoned it and began modifications of Human. The main differences are:
1. customizable colours
2. minimize, maximize and close icons
3. another way of painting window titles
Here is the screenshot:



The default colour is soft green, but you can change it to anything you like by selecting the "Selected Item" colour in the Themes Customization menu (System - Preferences - Theme - Customize - Colors)
Credits: bvc - close, minimize, maximize and unmaximize icons;
Daniel Borgmann, Billy Cantrell, Richard Stellingwerff - original Human theme files.

Download from here.

How to install a Desktop theme.