Parchment is now available.

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

Parchment is "maximally minimalist" in scope; It contains only the features it needs and nothing more. Despite this relatively small size, Parchment has been over two years in the making. This is in part because I wanted to release a complete, finished app but also because I believed it was important to get it right. Other projects I've started and completed in that time served as exercises in determining what Parchment needed, and what it didn't. The result is what you see today.

[mkhl@social.treehouse.systems]

@vtrlx that looks fantastic!

does it have a way to run shell script on selected text, like the pipe character in Acme's command language?

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

@mkhl Afraid not. Though Acme was an inspiration (Parchment started as a Sam clone, believe it or not), there's no command-running in Parchment. Instead, I achieve a similar result to what you ask by using Telepipe's clipboard redirection. See this document: https://codeberg.org/vtrlx/telepipe/src/branch/main/docs/Clipboard%20Redirection.md

[mkhl@social.treehouse.systems]

@vtrlx got it, thanks!

[tris@chaos.social]

@vtrlx Remember seeing https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2026/02/06/mid-life-transitions/, could it be spiritual successor to GNOME Text Editor?

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

@tris I don't know if the two apps are too comparable; Other than the surface level of being plain text editors, both apps have very different goals. G•T•E is concerned with compatibility and fitting in with how users would expect a text editor to lay out text, whereas Parchment is utterly unconcerned because my goal was primarily to enable too plain text editing using proportional type. The consequences of that difference are significant.

[tris@chaos.social]

@vtrlx Fair enough, once I discussed about using landlock in GTE with @chergert, I don't remember what exactly he said about that lol

[vatvslpr@c.im]

@vtrlx
I'm surprised you chose to default to using a proportional font if code editing is an intended use case. I have a feeling I'm not going to be the only one who asks. Do you have a FAQ or something where you explain your design choices?

[codebuzz@indieweb.social]

@vtrlx Looks interesting. One thing though, it shows a screen with a tab with a Markdown file, but I can't read anywhere if it supports Markdown and if so, in what capacity.

I'm curious if it does, that would make me want to try it out.

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

@VATVSLPR FAQ is something I've considered, yes. I'll probably do so sooner than later, but to summarize the many reasons to prefer proportional over monospace for code: I believe monospace is a distraction.

FWIW, when I use Parchment (for most of my programming and all of my writing), I use the system default sans-serif font. That is how I expect most users to use it as well.

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

@lerothas Parchment is primarily focused on presenting text with proportional type, and nearly every other choice I made with the app is in service of that goal.

[souzsa@bolha.us]

@vtrlx I liked that it has almost no input latency. Maybe the most responsive adwaita app I've used

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@vtrlx i continue to find every one of your design decisions surprising and compelling

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@vtrlx @VATVSLPR i also find the argument that monospace is ascii-centric to be compelling

[vtrlx@mastodon.social]

@hipsterelectron I could probably talk for hours about all the subtle choices I made in the app. Some were spur-of-the-moment tweaks that stuck because they felt good, some were extremely deliberate choices that I had made before writing the first line of code.

[gureito@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@vtrlx @VATVSLPR it's about time i give it a try on using proportional fonts again for coding. just realized that coincidentally, the last time i really had fun writing code was using the Leo Editor and it *was* setup that way anyway, the editor looks great ^_^

[loremipsum@s.cafe]

@vtrlx cool