Style Demo is a simple editor written as a test shell for a set of text editing routines. These routines support mixed fonts, sizes, styles and colors (if you have a color monitor), and “true” tabs (i.e., tabs like in Macwrite rather than Mockwrite, which simply inserts several spaces).
Why is Style Demo?
I am uploading Style Demo in the hopes that folks who download it will find all the bugs in the editing routines, so I can fix them. In other words, Style Demo is a beta test of “Style Edit”, the text editing package that it contains. Ultimately, Style Edit will be used in the Third Edition of Idealiner.
What to Look For
First, obvious bugs — things that just don't work, or crash the system. Second, design flaws. Style Demo should do things the same way most Macintosh applications do them. Please report any problems either by e-mail to CLIFF or in the Idealiner topic (category 12, topic 26, “Idealiner Q&A”).
Known Bugs
I know of a number of problems in the way text is selected, and the way the selection is shown. Double-click-drag selection picks up spaces incorrectly. Single-clicking at the end of a line “selects” to the end of the line, instead of making an insertion point. The insertion point is sometimes lost when at one side or the other of the window.
[Note: I think I've fixed the last two of these in this second release of Style Demo.]
Performance
Okay, Style Demo is slow. Actually, it's reasonably fast doing everything but typing. Typing is really slow. Part of the reason is that Style Edit is written almost entirely in Pascal (90%). I will convert a large part of it to assembler before I use it in a real program. Right now, however, I want to get as many bugs as possible while still in Pascal, because they'll be easier to fix.
On the other hand, I only want reasonable performance with one screenful or so of text. My test data is 2520 characters; if things work ok with that, I'll be satisfied. This is not supposed to handle a lot of text.
Options
The Options menu has color choices (if you have an Ugly II with a color monitor), and three odd commands. “Freeze Width” freezes the width of the text; you can then narrow the window and the horizontal scroll bar will appear. “Fast Typing” speeds up the rate at which Style Demo can handle keystrokes, by delaying screen updates. I think this is ugly; I'd like to hear what you think. “Draw Window” redraws all the visible text (erasing errors).
Documents
Style Demo writes plain text files (which can be read by most applications) and adds style information as a resource. A program reading a Style Demo document will read all the text but miss the style information. But at least it can read it. Conversely, Style Demo can read any plain text file; it will appear in 12-point Geneva, plain, black.
