Nvu (Download of the Month)

Nvu (Download of the Month)

Hand-knitting HTML is a useful skill when you want to achieve really spectacular results, but most folks are more concerned with getting material onto their site with a reasonable appearance at minimal effort. Hence the popularity of WYSIWYG tools like Microsoft Front Page (despite the pathologically bad HTML it produces). Linux users have traditionally ignored WYSIWYG tools, sticking to old favourites like vi, but with the rapid spread of desktop Linux, there's a need for a good user-oriented tool.

Nvu (New View) may just be what those users need. Unlike traditional editors like Bluefish and Quanta, which offer assistance in the form of syntax highlighting, templates for tables, project management, etc. Nvu's claim to fame is its WYSIWYG approach. Based on the code for Mozilla's Composer component, Nvu adds enhancements, such as a site manager, a CSS editor (based on CaScadeS), inline style support, forms, customizable toolbars, and tabbed editing of multiple files.

Installation: Although full source code is available, building from source is an involved procedure which also requires the Mozilla source. It's easiest to just download the binary tarball, then install it this way:

[root@sleipnir root]# cd /usr/local
[root@sleipnir local]# mkdir nvu-0.1
[root@sleipnir local]# cd nvu-0.1
[root@sleipnir nvu-0.1]# tar xzvf ~les/nvu-0.1.tar.gz
./
./nvu
./res/
. . .
[root@sleipnir nvu-0.1]#

Nvu is compiled against libstdc++.so.3, but you probably have a different version installed - for example, Red Hat 9 has libstdc++.so.5.0.3. No problem - just create a symbolic link in the following way:

[root@sleipnir nvu-0.1]# cd /usr/lib
[root@sleipnir lib]]# ln -s libstdc++.so.5.0.3 libstdc++.so.3
[root@sleipnir lib]

Nvu is only at a 0.1 release, but is reasonably stable. Definitely worth watching progress on this project (Oh, and there's even a [cough!] Windows [cough!] version).

Download from: http://www.nvu.com/ (but see also http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/danielglazman/weblog/index.php/Nvu if you want to install from source)

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