What is Ivy?

Ivy.app is a tiny editor intended for shell programs. Some programs need an editor to edit temporary files. The Editor is supposed to let the user edit the file, and save it before returning to the calling program. In traditional Terminal environments, vi often fullfills this service. In a graphical user interface, though, applications are designed to run side by side. So, replacing vi with Edit.app will not work: Edit.app starts, loads the file and returns control to the calling program. Unlike Ivy! Ivy starts, loads the file and won't return control to the calling process until it's finished.

Other consequences of this intended use are: minimal size, no nib file, orders itself front rather brute. So here's the feature list:

small
can be started from anywhere in a shell
short
orders itself front, curser all ready to edit
tiny
fits the window to the size of the text

Where can I get Ivy?

On our ftp server: the source distribution. (Please do not record this URL since it contains a numerical IP address that might change any time.)

It's only distributed in source, so you need a compiler and ProjectBuilder to install it. This should be no impediment, since only developers would have use for it, I'd presume. And there's so ridiculously little data in the source distribution that I can't bear distributing it quad-fat compiled. If you really do need it compiled, mail me.

Building instructions are included. The only caveat is that you have to save the project once before building.

Legals are covered by the GNU Public License. Take note of the fact that there's NO WARRANTY.

What's next?

I might add:

some standard emacs-like keystrokes like C-a, C-e, C-t
The Mark from emacs
go-to-line on the command line
a preferences panel for Preferences.app

I'm definitely not in for color, sound effects, localisation, multiple documents etc.

What's inside?

It might be of interest that this application doesn't need its nib file. When called from a shell anywhere in the file system, it wouldn't find it! So it assembles its menu and window all by itself, the latter fitting to the text at hand. It's not your good programming style example already, but i'm open for any further tweaking.

Who am I?

I am Felix Gatzemeier, for more see my homepage (in german). The program also contains code by Oliver Meyer.