Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!walt.cc.utexas.edu!hcobb
From: hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Should I go commercial?
Summary: Editor dreams
Keywords: DME editors
Message-ID: <20170@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 26 Oct 89 21:29:52 GMT
References: <8910240722.AA22726@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> <11884@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com>
Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP
Reply-To: hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb)
Followup-To: sender
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 38


	I've looked at DME, and its Arexx support looks real familiar. I.e.
"I call Arexx macros, they don't call me".  This is not a gripe vs DME,
everybody else does just the same thing.

	I have this ideal of an editor:

	The user types in "edit foo", and then the edit command (which is
rather small and easily residentable) checks to see if the manager process 
is running (there will only be one on any system), if not it starts it up
and hands it the command line it was given.  It then returns the error
result, if any, to the user and exits.

	The manager process runs all the time at a fairly high priority,
waiting for messages.  When it is told to edit a file, it first checks to
see if any buffer tasks have been assigned to that file, and if so it sends
one of them a message to "pop to the front", and then goes back to waiting.
It also can receive Arexx messages and acts as a host for Arexx scripts
being run by other programs or outside macros.  It is the only process in
the editor and so is the gateway to the file system.

	The buffer tasks are each just responceable for one window, and one
buffer, but two or more of them can share a buffer and provide two different
views into it.  When the user makes a save, load or browse request of them
they wake up the manager to handle it, but they do they're own editing 
(search, replace, word-wrap, etc.) through shared code.

	In addition to the standard cut and paste operations, every buffer
is 'posted' to the clipboard device, and so when other programs request
the data, the manager asks the buffer task responceable to make it available.

	Note that this scheme allows independent operations on shared buffers,
and will take great advantage of Arexx, without requiring it.

	Henry J. Cobb	hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu