Input and compilation/Text editors/CudaText

Introduction

CudaText (pronounced "TSudaText" from the Slavic word cuda = miracles) is a freeware open-source text editor for Windows, MacOS, Linux and other Unix(-like) operating systems. It can be extended by lexers, plugins, etc. through its Addons Manager and by user additions. It is written in Object Pascal and depends on the Python engine which is included in the Windows version.

Homepage, Download, Installation, Start

You can find the homepage on GitHub here: https://cudatext.github.io

To go directly to the download page on SourceForge visit: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cudatext

To install simply extract the content of the downloaded file to a folder and location of your choice.

Afterwards use cudatext.exe from the extracted main directory to start CudaText.

Integrating ConTeXt

Within CudaText use the Menu Bar to navigate to Plugins -> Addons Manager -> Install...

Use the search field of the pop-up window to find and install lexer: LaTeX by double-clicking, then confirming and afterwards closing the notification window. This add-on is of the type lexer and is used for syntax highlighting of LaTeX files. But it works for TeX or ConTeXt files as well.

The same way find and install plugin: Runner. This add-on is of the type plugin and is used to run commands from within CudaText such as the ConTeXt PDF build commands.

After installing the two add-ons close CudaText.

Within the CudaText main folder navigate to data \ buildsystems and create a text file. Rename it to ConTeXt.sublime-build and make sure the file suffix to be *.sublime-build which is the standard for build commands for both Sublime Text editor as well as CudaText's Runner plug-in.

Open the blank ConTeXt.sublime-build and save it after adding the following lines:

 {
   "file_patterns": ["*.tex"],
   "working_dir": "$file_path",
   "shell_cmd": "context --autopdf \"${file}\"",
 }

Now the basic setup is finished and CudaText can be used to highlight and build ConTeXt files. For the latter open a ConTeXt source file or create a new one with CudaText. When finished use the Menu Bar to navigate to Plugins -> Runner -> Build. Now the console should show ConTeXt output while the finished PDF should pop up within your default PDF viewer, according to the build command defined within ConTeXt.sublime-build.

Further reading

The guide above merely shows the very basic steps to get CudaText up and running with ConTeXt. Further content that helps getting the most out of this combination is planned to be added in the future.

Useful links:

The official Wiki: https://wiki.freepascal.org/CudaText

The official forum: https://synwrite.sourceforge.net/forums/

Runner plug-in readme: https://github.com/halfbrained/cuda_runner/tree/main/readme