Error: this text is already being edited, but editor doesn't start

[valdisvi]

Tested on Ubuntu with gedit, and Lubuntu with leafpad and gvim. When hot key is pressed, notification appears:

Textextern
Error: this text is already being edited

but editor is actually not opened (and there are no any running process).

[jlebon]

Can you check the browser console for error messages? Try from a freshly restarted Firefox instance.

[valdisvi]

Browser console is clear. System message happens, when in content.js, registerText() browser.runtime.sendMessage(...) is called. I couldn't figure out, how could I debug native part of the app.

[jlebon]

What editor are you using? Does it work with ["gedit"]?

[valdisvi]

The same message.

[valdisvi]

How can I test textern native binaries directly without involving browser? E.g. what should happen when I run:

/usr/local/libexec/textern/textern.py

[jlebon]

The script expects to be talking to Firefox, so it won't do anything if you just run it directly.

Some things to try:

• change the shortcut to something else -- the default combination may be getting intercepted by another program
• if you're installing using sudo make native-install, try instead make native-install USER=1
• make sure you have the latest version of Firefox; the first FF57 spin had some issues IIRC
• make sure you're checking the browser console for errors (Ctrl+Shift+J), not the developer console
• make sure you cloned the repo with --recurse-submodules (see https://github.com/jlebon/textern#installation)

If all the above fail, can you check after it gives the message whether Textern is still running in the background (e.g. ps aux | grep textern)?

[valdisvi]

Thanks! Reinstalling with make native-install USER=1 made it working.

[zeorin]

I had this same problem with terminal Emulator Kitty and Neovim. The posted solution worked for me, too.