TypeElectric 0.5.2 review

TypeElectric is a MDI text editor build around a newly developed text editor widget. Currently it provides plain text editing and ad

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Frank Mertens

0

TypeElectric is a MDI text editor build around a newly developed text editor widget.

Currently it provides plain text editing and advanced block indent.

Future version will also support syntax highlighting and remote editing.

TypeElectric originates from a demonstration application for text rendering and relational realtime data modeling. It still lacks support for persistent sessions and syntax highlighting - both I will work on next.

Most interestingly about the application is, that it contains its own text editor widget which may compete to QTextEdit and Scintilla. The widget is build by the means of FreeType, the MitShm extension and software based alpha blending. The user interface was choosen to be a MDI and similiar to PFE, which was a quite mature editor. For those people thinking MDI is a
misconception in user interface design can approve their arguments here. From the developer's standpoint the same application can easily support MDI, SDI and TDI (not turbo, but tabbed) at the same time.

Big note should also be taking on the fact that TypeElectric's text editor widget works internally in true device independent coordinates (in mm) and utilizes a relational data model to store typographic information. Those data model is based on highly efficient B-Tree data structures.

Also the editor widget was designed to be collaborative and therefore all user input is translated to a minimum set of serializable editor commands. In its normal operation the editor interprets those commands locally, but these commands could also easily make up a network protocol to broadcast document changes to several participants editing the same
remote document.

But that's music to be played in the future... Hopefully TypeElectric can be understood to be more than just a Notepad clone with the freakiest implementation ever.

What's New in This Release:
mproved installation procedure and fixed broken block indent. (Thanks for cnikiel's bug report.)