Parchment is Now Available

Write and edit plain text, today.

May 06, 2026

Longtime readers might know of my longtime project to write a text editor to suit my unusual tastes. After over two years of development, I am now happy to report that Parchment is now available!

Parchment is a very unusual text editing project. Despite appearances, Parchment has always been intended to be my editor for writing source code for software as well as published text. In fact, I am writing this post from Parchment! I have written most blog posts in the past two years either from Parchment or its predecessors. All of my GNOME apps have been written in Parchment as well, including Parchment itself. Since forking it, I have even rewritten some parts of LuaGObject to be better suited to Parchment.

Parchment is opinionated. It lacks syntax highlighting, intentionally caps the displayed line width at a very short length, does not support regular expressions for find-tuned find and replace functionality, otherwise omits many text editing features that programmers have come to expect and rely on, and most glaringly it defaults to displaying text using the system’s proportional font. This app also tries to be as clean as possible; it automatically removes trailing spaces and extra line breaks when a file is saved. Each of Parchment’s design choices exists to make writing and editing your own plain text as pleasant and distraction-free as possible.

If you’re skeptical but willing to try, I recommend simply exploring the app to see what it has to offer. Write a short letter or script to start with. Figure out how to work within these limitations. You may be surprised to learn how little is actually needed for good text editing, but remember that other editors will still be there if you need to perform a tricky edit or refactoring. Parchment is simply your destination for when you want a focused plain text writing experience.

Parchment does have a handful of advanced features, intentionally hidden away from most users. You can learn more from the Advanced Features section of its page.

Lastly, I need to thank Brage Fuglseth for suggesting the name Parchment. It is brilliant and evocative.

Issues can be reported on Codeberg, though the substantial amount of testing put into this app has led me to believe that it is effectively bug free. No other features are planned for it; Any future updates will likely be minor bugfixes, GNOME platform updates, and new translations. Maybe a rewrite.

If either you don’t have a Codeberg account or want to discuss Parchment outside of the scope of bug reporting, I am also reachable by email. No matter what you have to say about Parchment, I’d love to hear from you.

Enjoy writing!