Gedit text editor bottom panel's purpose

Question

I'm using Gedit and decided to explore its full functionality. There's a bottom panel available in Gedit that is normally hidden. When I pull it into view, it's empty. I'm wondering what it's for and how to make the best use of its features.

As requested, here's a screenshot that shows 1. the open bottom panel and 2. the open View menu that shows the checkbox to enable it.

I think this might be part of the terminal plugin. This python gedit plugin talks about it as a python console and references the terminal plugin which this really old post references as an embeded terminal. — mchid, Aug 15 '23 at 13:57
The bottom panel is also referenced here and the only reference I could find was wrt the python console. — mchid, Aug 15 '23 at 13:59
Okay, I found this question that shows the embeded terminal in action. — mchid, Aug 15 '23 at 14:04

karel · Answer 1 · 2023-08-15T14:54:41.183

You can show the bottom panel in Gedit by selecting hamburger menu icon ( ≡ ) in the top right corner of Gedit -> View -> Bottom Panel.

You can enable the Python Console in Gedit by selecting hamburger menu icon ( ≡ ) in the top right corner of Gedit -> Preferences -> Plugins tab -> check the checkbox to the left of Python Console.

The Python Console plugin enables you to run Python code in the bottom panel as shown in the above screenshot.

You can also run shell scripts in the Gedit bottom panel by enabling the Embedded Terminal plugin. To use the Embedded Terminal plugin you must install the gedit-plugins package with sudo apt install gedit-plugins. Then you can enable the Embedded Terminal in Gedit by selecting hamburger menu icon ( ≡ ) in the top right corner of Gedit -> Preferences -> Plugins tab -> check the checkbox to the left of Embedded Terminal. The following screenshot shows an example of using the embedded terminal in the bottom panel in Gedit.

The statusbar is used to access different functions in Gedit including the programming language type which is used to choose the type of code highlighting (Plain Text is selected in the below screenshot), the Tab Width when you press the Tab key, and toggling Display line numbers.

To enable/disable the statusbar in Gedit select hamburger menu icon ( ≡ ) in the top right corner of Gedit -> Preferences -> View tab -> check the checkbox to the left of Display statusbar as indicated by the mouse cursor in the below screenshot.

This panel is much larger than, and above the status bar. You open it by opening the main men, then selecting View. A sub menu appears that allows you to open a side panel and/or a bottom panel. As seen in the screen shot I added by request. — Dave Wellsted, Aug 15 '23 at 13:49
You don't need the entire gedit-plugins package. Embedded Terminal can be installed by sudo apt install gedit-plugin-terminal — sotirov, Aug 15 '23 at 15:53

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 12 '23 at 19:17

2

Looks like the Bottom Panel is a placeholder for other plugins.

For example, activate Python Console plugin. You will only see the console if View → Bottom Panel is activated.

Another plugin that uses the Bottom Panel is Embedded Terminal. It adds functionality to run terminal commands from gedit. You can install it by:

sudo apt install gedit-plugin-terminal

edited Oct 12 '23 at 19:17

BeastOfCaerbannog

14,585

answered Aug 15 '23 at 14:13

sotirov

3,169

Gedit text editor bottom panel's purpose

2 Answers2