Ubuntu – Gedit won’t let me change the text size: stuck in giant text mode

gedittext-editor

At first glance this sounds like a duplicate of Can't change text size in gedit, but it isn't: in that question they're actually talking about print size, I'm not.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 and Gedit 3.10.4.

Anyway – last week, to let one of my kids play with the text editor, I changed the default text size to be large, on the Edit/Preferences/"Font and Colour" tab. Now, I can't change it back – I tick on the box to use the default "Ubuntu Monospace 13" font, and the box is ticked and then unticks itself straight away. I can change the font size instead, and the change just reverts as soon as it's saved.

I think it might be due to some config file which has the wrong permissions: if I open Gedit in sudo mode, I can change the font size. But the change made here doesn't cross over back into "non-sudo" gedit.

The only config file I can find in home is ~/.config/gedit/accels and the permissions are normal on that. I think that's just a list of keyboard shortcuts anyway. There's lots of other config files in /usr/share/gedit/ but none of them show as being modified recently.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling gedit but it didn't make any difference.

Any ideas anyone?

Best Answer

It sounds similar to this problem: gedit "Manage External Tools" menu option doesn't appear

Use namei to find if sudo owns some of your configuration files:

$ namei -l ~/.config/gedit/tools
f: /home/rick/.config/gedit/tools
drwxr-xr-x root root /
drwxr-xr-x root root home
drwxr-xr-x rick rick rick
drwx------ rick rick .config
drwxr-xr-x root root gedit
drwxrwxr-x rick rick tools

If you see root appear as owner or group (after the first two directories, / and home) then use this command:

sudo chown -cR user:user /home/user

Where user is your user ID. ie Max:Max /home/Max

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Ubuntu – How to you print a text file via gedit from the command line

There is a2ps utility for pagination and pretty printing of plain text.

Ubuntu – Per file-type preferences in gedit

ok, since it seems not possible, I put together a proto-plugin for gedit2 that works for me at the moment. I still hope that someone has a better answer...

~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins/mimeprefs.py

import gedit

class MimePrefsPlugin(gedit.Plugin):
    def __init__(self):
        gedit.Plugin.__init__(self)

    def activate(self, window):
        pass

    def deactivate(self, window):
        pass

    def update_ui(self, window):
        doc = window.get_active_document()
        try:
            mt = doc.get_mime_type()
        except AttributeError:
            return
        view = window.get_active_view()
        if 'x-tex' in mt:
            view.set_font(False, 'Garamond 14')
        elif 'x-python' in mt:
            view.set_font(False, 'Monospace 12')
        else:
            view.set_font(True, 'Monospace 10')

~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins/mimeprefs.gedit-plugin

[Gedit Plugin]
Loader=python
Module=mimeprefs
IAge=2
Name=Mime-Prefs v1
Description=A plugin to set font preferences based on the mimetype of the document
Authors=-
Copyright=Public Domain
Website=None

EDIT: update for gedit3: plugin files go in ~/.local/share/gedit/plugins/and look like this:

mimeprefs.plugin:

[Plugin]
Loader=python
Module=mimeprefs
IAge=3
Name=Mime-Prefs
Description=A plugin to set font preferences based on the mimetype of the document
Authors=Stefan Schwarzburg
Copyright=Public Domain
Website=None
Version=1.0.0

mimeprefs.py:

from gi.repository import GObject, Gedit


class MimePrefsPlugin(GObject.Object, Gedit.WindowActivatable):
    __gtype_name__ = "MimePrefsPlugin"
    window = GObject.property(type=Gedit.Window)

    def __init__(self):
        GObject.Object.__init__(self)

    def do_activate(self):
        pass

    def do_deactivate(self):
        pass

    def do_update_state(self):
        doc = self.window.get_active_document()
        try:
            mt = doc.get_mime_type()
        except AttributeError:
            return
        view = self.window.get_active_view()
        if 'x-tex' in mt:
            view.set_font(False, 'Garamond 14')
        elif 'x-python' in mt:
            view.set_font(False, 'Monospace 12')
        else:
            view.set_font(True, 'Monospace 10')

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Per file-type preferences in gedit

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