Re: [Discuss-gnustep] State of the text system

[Philippe C.D. Robert]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, Fred Kiefer wrote:
> Hi Philippe,
<snip some explanation of Fred> 
> When this is done and if it is worth the effort, I could build up
> another intermediate implementation of a layout manager, based on the
> NSStringDrawing code. (The main restriction here is "char == glyph")
> This surely is not the best way to get a real Openstep implementation,
> but if you need it I would do that extra work. As far as I see, it won't
> save any work to implement some non rich text editor. The rich text
> comes almost fr free if the rest is done properly.
> 
> I don't quite understand what it is that you are missing in the current
> implementation of NSText. If you could formulate more precise what you
> want, I might try to get that working even with the current layout
> manager. What about a list of three or four items that you really need
> for the project centre in the next weeks? And would you like to see that
> intermediate layout manager or can you wait for the real one?

Hi,

what I miss today is actually very simple to describe. I would really like to
have a text system, which can handle (basic) plain text, no special encodings
etc, but which could be used to write basic (coding) editors, plain text mail
viewers etc.
What I mean is that while the OpenStep API offers a rich functionality, we do
not have such a basic feature as a simple and *working* text view. The best
thing to explain this is perhaps to see the examples, eg open a class/header
files in the internal 'editor' in the latest ProjectCenter snapshot and just
*try* to select some text and after that scroll the text view a little bit. You
will notice what I mean. And this is just a 'plain NSTextView in a plain
NSScrollView'...
I know that it is perhaps a bit ignorant of me to talk like that, I know how
hard it is to write a good text system, but w/o such an API we never will see
basic apps written for GNUstep in the midterm future. 

But - despite 'my' needs - I think, it is the best to let you do your work w/o a
long whishlist of features, since you know best what has to be done, how and in
which order, and I am sure you will do a great job...;-) I just want to repeat
(again...grin), that the textsystem IMHO plays a central role in the success
story of GNUstep.

sweet dreams, Phil
-- 
Philippe C.D. Robert
Developer - StudioSendai.com