Kaatib - Urdu Unicode Text Editor

Kaatib(کاتب) is a unicode text editor specifically designed for use with right to left cursive language text editing, particularly for Urdu.

Design

Kaatib is a C language application using NAppGui Framework for cross-platform gui application. It uses FreeType, HarfBuzz and libraqm for the unicode script rendering.

Features

• Fast, cross-platform, light weight
• Dedicated RTL text editor
• Roman transliteration
• Built-in Onscreen keyboard, supporting mutiple languages
• NLP
• Spell checker

Setup

Windows

• Build Tools

  • MSVC:

    From the terminal run,

    winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools --force
    --override "--passive --wait --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools;includeRecommended"

---

NOTE

• for all the subsequent commands use the Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022.
• CMake comes bundled with MSVC installation, so no need to install separately.

---

• NAppGui

  GUI framework for the application.

  1. Download source

     git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/frang75/nappgui_src.git
     cd nappgui_src

  2. Build debug version

     cmake -S . -B build/static-debug -DNAPPGUI_DEMO=NO
     cmake --build build/static-debug --config Debug -j 4
     cmake --install build/static-debug --config Debug --prefix C:/nappgui/static-debug

  3. Build the release version

     cmake -S . -B build/static-release -DNAPPGUI_DEMO=NO
     cmake --build build/static-release --config Release -j 4
     cmake --install build/static-release --config Release --prefix C:/nappgui/static-release

  This configures, builds (statically linking versions of the framework) and installs them to the specified location (c:/nappgui in the above instructions.) with both Debug and Release flavors.

• vcpkg

  Install vcpkg, if not already installed,

  git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
  cd vcpkg && bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

• Kaatib

  Get the kaatib source code.

  git clone https://github.com/roximn148/kaatib.git
  cd kaatib

• Build

  1. Define presets,

     For building, create cmake presets file CMakeUserPresets.json in the project root directory, for debug and release builds as well as providing the paths to nappgui and vcpkg as environment variables.

     {
         "version": 4,
         "configurePresets": [
             {
                 "name": "debug",
                 "inherits": "x64-debug",
                 "environment": {
                     "NAPPGUI_ROOT": "c:\\nappgui",
                     "VCPKG_ROOT": "<path/to/vcpkg>"
                 }
             },
             {
                 "name": "release",
                 "inherits": "x64-release",
                 "environment": {
                     "NAPPGUI_ROOT": "C:\\nappgui",
                     "VCPKG_ROOT": "<path/to/vcpkg>"
                 }
             }
         ],
         "buildPresets": [
             {
                 "name": "debug",
                 "displayName": "Windows Debug build",
                 "configurePreset": "debug",
                 "description": "Vanilla debug build for windows"
             },
             {
                 "name": "release",
                 "displayName": "Windows Release build",
                 "configurePreset": "release",
                 "description": "Vanilla release build for windows"
             }
         ]
     }

  2. select a configure preset, (debug or release),

     cmake --preset=debug

  3. build the project.

     cmake --build --preset=debug

Linux (incomplete & untested)

• Build Tools

• NAppGui

  GUI framework for the application.

  git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/frang75/nappgui_src.git
  cd nappgui_src
  
  cmake -S . -B build -DNAPPGUI_DEMO=NO -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
  cmake --build build -j 4
  cmake --install build --config Release --prefix /usr/local/nappgui

  This configures and builds the Release version of the framework at the specified location (/usr/local/nappgui in the above instructions.)

• Kaatib

  Get the Kaatib source code.

  git clone https://github.com/roximn148/kaatib.git
  cd kaatib

• Unity

  For unit testing.

  In the Kaatib source directory download the Unity source code.

  git clone https://github.com/ThrowTheSwitch/Unity.git

Icons

The icons used are Material Icons by Google. The Iconer website was used for rendering icons to png. (Color #0b6105, Size 20, Indent 0).