Path: csiph.com!news.nrbbs.org!border-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:08:43 +0000 Followup-To: comp.editors From: steve g Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Editor design & Buffer Gap References: <115tgk1$hmg2$2@kst.eternal-september.org> <1hEgS.428964$DOD1.142122@fx17.ams4> <11ag1j1$2lam4$1@dont-email.me> <87se2aeguh.fsf@gmail.com> <11b25hh$11ann$1@dont-email.me> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:08:32 -0400 Message-ID: <8733u1wrcf.fsf@gmail.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:8IxQS3WJK//v+eQ/EGPKh6auE4w= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Lines: 66 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-QAeP051rKK+HlVsaCyapVPvG93hVYO6sEcUJxD5j5tXQRaixEBoy+vadj0MIBwVJT7etExnKanf/KcP!LrQZkxBIiSTOFao2bjysCbhtvCZpgesyNPmUFdknhrU7+fk= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Xref: csiph.com comp.editors:106997 comp.lang.c:403329 Anthony Howe writes: > On 2026-10-12 17:42, steve g wrote: >> Anthony Howe writes: >> >> >>> The designing the edit engine is what fascinates me, regardless of UI. Pity >>> there are few discussions any more around this topic. >> I agree. I would love to play with a redisplay engine. let alone read >> more about them. I usually just read some old pascal books from the >> 1990s. I would love to reimplement lotus style menus ! > Redisplay in text, you thinking Curses/NCurses? terminfo/ncurses > Curses was designed to abstract the assorted video terminals of the day (now > everything is an VT100/ANSI derivative) and to optimise the sending of minimal > sequences of escape codes to a **serial terminal** (or terminal emulator) to > update the screen. yes i am aware > There used to be BSD Curses, Solaris Curses, System V Curses, pdcurses, (and > Mortice Kern Systems (MKS) Curses). X/Open (now SUS) created a standard for > Curses that brought together the minor difference into one. NCurses (written > in C++) was starting around the time of POSIX.2, X/Open, and Unicode standards > and hasn't change much since and is stable. SUS has Curses Issue 7 which > clarifies the text. I am very aware of this aggrevation. > Terminal Difference algorithms are related to Edit Distance / Longest Common > Subsequence algorithms - think `diff(1)`. There is a paper from Bill Joy on > Curses and some other papers related to terminal Edit Distance/LCS I obtained > when working on MKS Curses (buried on my book shelf). yeah, but building the matrix is not easy, especially when the person is currently typing. > There are books "Software Tools in PASCAL" by Kernigan & Plauger ISBN > 0-201-103342-7 and "A Software Tools Sampler" by Web Miller ISBN 0-13-822305-X > that cover editors. The latter also covers terminal updating for an editor > (Edit Distance/LCS). See also `diff(1)` and my IOCCC 2015 `npdif(1)` also > cover Edit Distance/LCS (I supply several References in the documentation to > papers). YES! New Books! Thank you! > Frankly I think terminal updates is a well solved problem - worth learning and > studying since the topic of Edit Distance/LCS relates to other subject areas > like gene sequencing, but not worth a new library IMO. I agree with you on this. > An editor's edit engine covers the storage and its manipulation of the text. > The terminal update display algorithm for an editor would be part of the > UI/hardware interface and as has been mentioned else where GUI for desktop > paradigms. Well call the "edit engine" a "redisplay engine". Thank you for the descent conversation and my new books that are now being shipped by amazon, thank you for the recommendations.