Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!brian
From: brian@ut-sally.UUCP (Brian H. Powell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: tabs in textedit
Message-ID: <10108@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jan 88 20:20:42 GMT
References: <1860@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <1988Jan14.111722.766@mntgfx.mentor.com>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 34
Keywords: tabs textedit

In a recent article, tomc@mntgfx.mentor.com (Tom Carstensen) writes:
> As far as I'm concerned, TextEdit is worthless 
> because of it's 32K limit, non-handling of tabs,
> and the implementation is so slow.

     But you left out the worst part:  it doesn't do _any_ error checking.  In
particular, it loves to run out of memory and not tell you about it.  If I
were going to write a new TextEdit, I would do so to get error checking, not
tabs, the 32K limit or anything else.
     (Of course, if you rewrite TextEdit, it's also easier to implement the
arrow keys according to the user interface guidelines.  (In particular,
modifier keys with arrow keys.)  It's not that hard to implement the
guidelines with TE, but the solution is not at all intuitive.  See a posting I
made a few months ago about arrow keys.)
     (Of course, it may not be a good idea to implement the user interface
guidelines; Apple's response to my work was along the lines of, "How dare you
confuse the user by implementing the User Interface Guidelines and doing
something different than what TextEdit does?"  I guess Apple was feeling
especially schizophrenic that day.)

> I originally
> added by on StdMeas and StdTxt routines to support
> tabs, but by doing this, selecting text was
> EXTREMELY sluggish and annoying.  (Try typing 
> in a line of 200 characters or so WITH tabs, and then
> selecting that line - moving the mouse back and forth - UGH!).
     Mine isn't terribly slow.  It's certainly slower than "normal", but it's
not intolerable.  I even wrote mine in C.

     It's great that you took the effort to rewrite TextEdit.  When I was
working on this stuff, I certainly considered it, but I didn't need a powerful
editor, so I just put up with TE.

Brian