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From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Tabs in TextEdit
Message-ID: <1041@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Jul-87 15:38:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: vaxb.1041
Posted: Wed Jul 29 15:38:11 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 08:10:47 EDT
References: <8587@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 29
Summary: Looks chancy to me...

In article <8587@ut-sally.UUCP>, brian@ut-sally.UUCP (Brian H. Powell) writes:
> 
>      I've been working on adding tabs to my TextEdit-based editor...

>      First, I looked at all the scary code in the November 1986 MacTutor...
> ...Fortunately, my editor was simpler than his general case...
>
>  [ various stuff... ]
>
>  [ As part of a procedure for measuring text length: ]
>
> 	Else you'll have to back up and find the most recent CR.  (Don't
> 	   forget you may be on the first line, so you want to stop when you
> 	   get to the beginning of the text.  I had the current TEHandle
> 	   as a global, so this wasn't hard.)

I don't know what the ultimate purpose of all this is, but if it's part
of a serious program, it seems rather chancy. Where does it say that
TextEdit won't copy some text to a temporary area and call the text
measurement routine for that? Searching backwards for the beginning of
the line certainly won't work then. I don't know why Apple might make
a change of this sort, but it's certainly not impossible.

As I recall, the MacTutor stuff had some dicey stuff too, but did rely
only on features that were at least mentioned in IM.

Life would be much easier if Apple had put in tab support to start with.

   Radford Neal