Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I’ve skirted the idea of including the ancient Beaver text/code editor on some of my Ubuntu systems, mostly because I didn’t have the patience or desire to compile it myself.

In practice though, it’s quite simple to do, requiring only libgtk1.2-dev for the old, 0.2.7 version on a Hardy system. No doubt the newer versions require a little more, but the GTK1.2 version comes out quite pretty.

Pretty is a relative term, of course.

Functionwise it has a little more depth than gtkedit, but not quite as much as, say, OpenOffice. 😉 It’s a shame it’s not part of the Ubuntu repos (or Debian, for that matter), although I see where it has been terrifically dormant, or at least stagnant for a few years. And of course, if somebody sits too long without moving, they get omitted. 😦

If I can figure out how to package it cleanly, I’ll probably add it to the GTK1.2 remix.