Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Macintosh handles
Keywords: handle, TextEdit, FSWrite
Message-ID: <8071@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 20 Jul 89 04:23:00 GMT
References: <1044@clinet.FI> <8043@hoptoad.uucp> <1409@unix.SRI.COM>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Distribution: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 35

In article <1044@clinet.FI> maa@clinet.FI (Miika Asunta) writes:
>2)	How can I store a TEstylehandle entirely into a file? Is
>	the following (written in pseudo-code) enough:
>	FSWrite n bytes , pointer (TEstylehandle^)

In article <1409@unix.SRI.COM> stores@unix.UUCP (Matt Mora) writes:
>Tim, think he wants to save the style information not just the text.

Oops, look like you're right.  I haven't used the styled textEdit yet
(it seems pretty pointless until they get rid of the length limits,
frankly) and so I just read right over that.

>I haven't used the new TE styles yet butI read the chapter awhile ago
>and i think it mentions somthing about a new scrap type 'styl' that
>you might be able to save in the resource fork.

I suppose that could work, but I just did a little looking and it
appears that Miika was correct.  All the style information is stored in
a single handle which could be written out to a file by a single
FSWrite call.  However, as you imply, it might be better to write it to
a resource instead.  That way you can have a plain text file in the
data fork with associated style information in the resource fork.

But again, this would only be really useful if Apple eliminated the
size limitations, both tacit and overt.  The 32K limit is bad enough,
but in practice, handle resizing overhead (and, I suppose, line array
maintenance) makes text edit records impossibly slow at lengths as
small as 2K.  Yech.  TextEdit does a lot of really nice stuff, and I
just wish they'd make it useful for something other than the Dialog
Manager.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be
 restrained..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"