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From: duggie@Jessica.stanford.edu (Doug Felt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Text editor help
Keywords: TextEdit, Tabs
Message-ID: <3845@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 4 Oct 88 23:20:53 GMT
References: <2476@rti.UUCP> <2580001@hpausla.HP.COM>
Sender: news@Portia.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: duggie@Jessica.stanford.edu (Doug Felt)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 23

For exercise I have been writing a replacement for textedit which
supports tabs.  I haven't looked at capps' prime, and don't have any
means of editing files that are not all in memory.  I'm planning to
remove the 32K limit, support the script manager, and not crash when I
run out of memory.  I haven't tackled multiple styles/fonts/sizes etc.
It a substantial job but not that big.  I've been at it about a month,
and am about 90% complete except for debugging (you may snicker quietly).

Tabs are tricky.  Who knows what tabs mean when you mix left-to-right
and right-to-left text (arabic)?  What standards are there for tabs
that are not identically spaced?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Anyway, one suspects Apple will come out with something to support multiple
scripts, if they are serious about the script manager.  Whether they support
tabs, columns, superscript, etc, however, is another question.  I guess
they have to leave something for people to make money at...

Doug Felt
Courseware Authoring Tools Project
Sweet Hall 3rd Floor
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
duggie@jessica.stanford.edu