Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: More than 32k into a TextEdit window?
Message-ID: <15584@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 15 Sep 89 00:29:45 GMT
References: <10417@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <15574@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <3956@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Thayer School of Engineering
Lines: 42

In article <3956@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> jnh@ecemwl.UUCP (Joseph N. Hall) writes:
>In article <15574@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
>	(Earle R. Horton) writes:
>>In article <10417@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
>>	(Brian Kendig) writes:
>>>How do I get more than 32k into a TextEdit window?
...
>ERH suggests using a linked list of handles for line-oriented text records.
>This is the easier approach if what you want is a WYSIWYG editor with fancy
>formatting capabilities, but on the other hand if you want just a text
>editor, the "big blob" of text approach is somewhat easier to implement.

The "big blob" approach will break down performance-wise once your text
exceeds a few tens of kilobytes in size, maybe less.  Since the point is
to get more than 32k, this seems like a bad choice to me.  Another
approach is the "sectioned blob," a block of text with a hole or two in
the middle.  This should be only somewhat more difficult than the "big
blob," but should afford acceptable performance if done right.  The
whole point of the Technote I quoted is that you will not get good
performance with large text documents if you use TextEdit or anything
like it.

>If I'm not mistaken, source code to two of these editors, MacJove and
>MicroEmacs (both of which are sort of emacs clones), is available.  I don't
>remember from where, exactly.  The display, editing, scrolling, etc., code
>from one of these may prove edifying.

I mailed the MicroEmacs source code to sumex a few days ago.  It has
most of the stuff you will need except for multiple window support and
hilighted selected ranges.  It's not reentrant, either.  With some heavy
massaging, and a couple thousand more lines of C code, it might do what
you want.

My own feeling on this matter is that it would not be conceptually
difficult to implement a general high-performance text handling package
for the Macintosh.  It would, however, take some time to produce
anything that is as easy to use as TextEdit and robust enough to
handle large blocks of text.  Sadly, the amount of time involved
significantly reduces the possibility that anyone is going to give
something like this away.

Earle R. Horton