Re: Pipe dreams

["Harrison, Shawn" shawn_harrison@xxxxxxxx]

Rafe T. wrote:

≪The secret to doing this, I believe, would be improving that which has
been begging to be improved about *something like Xywrite* while
retaining what makes it so good. ≫

Ah, now you're talking. The idea of using a command line in a text editor
is hardly the intellectual property of TTG.

≪To me what
distinguishes Xy -- even more than the command line, or even its
splendid customizability -- is the ability to edit and review in either
expanded or regular view.≫

Yes, exactly. It is this function that I love so much. WordPerfect lets
you "view codes," but it is a faint shadow of being able to toggle
between "expanded" and "regular" views. I am not aware of any other
editor on the planet that does this.

≪It should be everything like Xywrite (fast, with a comprehensive macro
language, ideally guaranteeing simple conversion from XPL). It should
be fast and it should be cross-platform (ie, Java).≫

You've got a tall order here--and perhaps an insoluble dilemma. XyWrite
is so fast in part because it was written in Assembly language and is
highly optimized. (It was also written at a time when machines were slow
and memory was precious -- both of which worked to give us a fast, lean
editor). But Assembly language programs are not cross-platform -- they
tend to be very machine-specific. Higher-level languages tend to be
slower and unoptimized. Applications written in generalized,
cross-platform languages are of necessity much further from the machine,
therefore less optimized and slower. In normal editing you wouldn't
necessarily see the difference, but when you begin running macros, you'd
see a real slowdown. In addition, Graphic User Interfaces tend to take
more processor time and code, so you'll probably lose some speed there as
well, unless it is a console-based application.

≪And it should be open source. ≫

How come?

I actually do agree with you on all of these points. I would like to see
an open-source editor with a command line, embedded powerful macro
language, and visual/expanded mode functionality. Several months ago I
started working on just such an editor in my spare time in an interpreted
language called Tcl, which has a great graphic user interface toolkit and
is cross-platform to boot. Most of the things you would like to see in an
editor would not be terribly difficult to implement in that language, but
I imagine speed may not be acceptable. I got bogged down with the
complexity of the project and the lack of free time, so it's been on the
shelf. But you're spurring me into thinking about it again.

But I think this discussion is becoming more off-topic as we go. May I
suggest that we (and those interested) continue the discussion off-list?
That way the list can get . . . back to XyWrite! (to paraphrase N.
Sivin).

=================================================================
Shawn Harrison       | "One does not discover new lands
Associate Editor      | without consenting to lose sight of
Tyndale House Publishers  | the shore for a very long time."
shawn_harrison@xxxxxxxx |          --Andre Gide
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