ghostwriter is a Windows and Linux text editor for Markdown, which is a plain text markup format created by John Gruber. For more information about Markdown, please visit John Gruber’s website at http://www.daringfireball.net. ghostwriter provides a relaxing, distraction-free writing environment, whether your masterpiece be that next blog post, your school paper, or your NaNoWriMo novel. Here are just a few of its features:
- Syntax highlighting of Markdown
- Navigation of document headings
- Full-screen mode
- Focus mode that highlights the current sentence, line, three lines, or paragraph
- Two built-in themes, one light and one dark
- Theme creator for custom colors and background images
- Spell checking with Hunspell
- A Live word count
- A live HTML preview as you type
- Use of custom CSS style sheets for HTML preview
- Image URL insertion via dragging and dropping an image file into the editor
- Sundown processor built in for preview and export to HTML
- Interoperability with the following Markdown processors (if installed) for preview and export to popular document formats, such as PDF, ODT, and RTF:
The best part is that ghostwriter is entirely free and open source. No longer do you have to look at your friend's stylish Mac OS X Markdown editor with envy. ghostwriter competitively provides the same style and functionality as many other famous editors for both Windows and Linux.
You can view screenshots of the application at ghostwriter's project page.
On Windows, you can either download the setup.exe and go through the setup wizard (recommended), or you can run the portable version (advanced users). To install via the setup wizard, download ghostwriter-setup.exe to a location of your choice, double click on its icon to run, and follow the installation steps. Note that you must have administrator rights to install.
The portable version is a zip file which you can unzip to any location on your computer. Within the zip file is a simple folder containing the ghostwriter.exe file. Double click on this file to run the program. The dictionaries subfolder contains your Hunspell dictionaries. The data subfolder contains the location of your personal dictionaries, themes, and application settings. The portable version is an excellent alternative for when you do not have administrative rights to install the application. You can take it anywhere on a thumb drive and run it--at school, a friend's house, etc.
If you are running Ubuntu or one of its derivatives (Linux Mint, Xubuntu, etc.), simply add the wereturtle Launchpad PPA to your system. Open a terminal, and enter the following:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
You can now install the ghostwriter package. Please consult the Launchpad guide, Installing software from a PPA, for further details.
Also, be on the lookout for ghostwriter making its debut in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories in the future. In the meantime, if you are a repository maintainer of any Linux distribution, I would appreciate your help in getting ghostwriter packaged.
Finally, you may follow the build instructions below to install on Linux with the latest source code.
Unfortunately, since I do not own an Apple computer, I cannot reasonably create a Mac version of this application. However, if you happen to be a Mac user yourself and have the knowledge, you can build the source code. Theoretically, it should work; but you may run into some bugs since ghostwriter is untested on this platform.
If you are willing to test ghostwriter on Mac OS X and provide bug fixes through GitHub, your help would be very much appreciated. Should you choose to do so, you will want to use Qt 5 rather than 4.8, since certain QGraphicsEffects may not work on 4.8 on Mac OS X, whereas there is hope that they will on version 5, based on the documentation. Spell checking with Hunspell and Voikko will need careful testing as well. You may wish to consult the source code for FocusWriter to get the latest patches, since ghostwriter lifted and modified parts of it.
Finally, I based ghostwriter's packaging structure on FocusWriter, including for Mac OS X, to give you a head start. You will want to once again look at FocusWriter's .pro file and resource files to ensure everything is in place within ghostwriter for a successful OS X build and installation.
If you wish to build from the source code, you will need either Qt 4.8 or Qt 5, available from http://www.qt.io/ if you are on Windows or Mac OS X, or in your Linux distribution's repository. This documentation assumes you already have the source code unzipped in a folder.
Open a DOS terminal window, and enter the following commands:
> cd <your_ghostwriter_folder_location>
> qmake
The next command depends on whether you have chosen to use Qt with MinGW or with Microsoft's compiler. If you are using MinGW, enter the following:
> mingw32-make
If you are using Microsoft's tools, enter the following:
> nmake release
Unless you have built ghostwriter as a standalone executable statically linked to your own build of Qt's source code, you will need to copy the necessary Qt (and MinGW) .dll files to the same location as ghostwriter.exe so that the executable can find the required libraries.
Before proceeding, ensure that you have the following packages installed for Qt 5:
- qt5-default,
- qtbase5-dev,
- libqt5svg5-dev,
- qtmultimedia5-dev,
- libqt5webkit5-dev,
- libhunspell-dev,
- pkg-config
- libqt5concurrent5
- libqt5printsupport5
- libqt5svg5
Note that you may also compile and run against Qt 4.8; however, Qt 5 is optimal for for its newer features. Qt 4.8 has similar package dependencies to what is listed above. You will have to find their Qt 4.8 equivalents in your Linux distribution's repository.
Next, open a terminal window, and enter the following commands:
$ cd <your_ghostwriter_folder_location>
$ qmake
$ make
$ make install
The last command will install ghostwriter on your machine. If you need to install the application in an alternative location to /usr/local, enter the following command in lieu of the second command above, passing in the desired value for PREFIX:
$ qmake PREFIX=<your_install_path_here>
For example, to install under /opt, you would enter:
$ qmake PREFIX=/opt
Open a terminal window, and enter the following commands:
$ qmake -spec macx-g++
$ make
Note: If you are a hobbyist OS X developer and can get ghostwriter to build, install, and run successfully, please put in a pull request for this README file through GitHub with improved instructions for this process. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
For terminal users, ghostwriter can be run from the command line. In your terminal window, simply type the following:
$ ghostwriter myfile.md
where myfile.md is the path to your Markdown text file.
You can download the Windows Portable version of ghostwriter, or make your own on any OS. Just as with FocusWriter, simply create a folder named data in the same folder as the ghostwriter.exe or ghostwriter executable file (depending on the OS). The application will now use settings and themes in this folder. If you need to migrate existing themes you created while running in non-portable mode, simply copy them from the relevant folder below:
-
Windows: C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Remote\ghostwriter\themes
-
Linux: /home/<your_user_name>/.config/ghostwriter/themes
-
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/ghostwriter/themes
Note: The Mac OS X settings location needs to be confirmed. A full sample application path would also be helpful (instead of listing ~/). If you are a hobbyist OS X developer and if you can confirm where ghostwriter stores it's settings, please put in a pull request with your revisions to this README file.
Please submit any bugs you find through GitHub, with a detailed description on how to replicate the problem. New feature requests are also welcome. Please see the roadmap below for ideas for which you can submit pull requests. Also, if you happen to be knowledgeable with C++/Qt, please feel free to submit pull requests for bug fixes.
Finally, if you wish to thank me by donating to the tip jar, you can flattr me from GitHub. Simply sign up for Flattr if you haven't already, connect your Flattr account to your GitHub account, and then Star my repository from GitHub. You can also simply visit the ghostwriter project page and click on the Flattr button at the bottom of the page. I'll use your generous tip to treat my family to fish tacos. Yum!
- ghostwriter added into the various Linux distribution repositories (Debian, Fedora, etc.). Help wanted!
- A fully-tested Mac OS X port. Help wanted!
- Translation of ghostwriter into other languages via Qt Linguist. Help wanted!
The source code for ghostwriter is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3. However, various icons and third-party FOSS code (i.e., Hunspell and Sundown) have different licenses compatible with GPLv3. Please read the COPYING files in the respective folders for the different licenses.