Re: rtf parsing

[Alexander Malmberg]

Sorry about the duplicate. Accidentally sent it before it was done.

Fred Kiefer wrote:
[snip]
> It would be great if somebody took over the responsibility for the RTF
> parser and came up with a better implementation. But I don't see this as
> a high priority issue.

OK. I'll probably have a closer look at it soon.

> Currently the rest of the text system needs more
> attention. This must be sorted out for the next release of GNUstep,
> while the RTF parser is bad enough to work.

What more needs to be sorted out? Most things work for me now, so I
don't know of any specific important issue. (Performance needs
improving, but that isn't a show-stopper. I'm working on optimizing the
common cases now.)

> BTW, talking about the text system, is there a specific reason why you
> did remove the code for ruler markers in NSLayoutManager? This now leads
> to a crash when switching on rulers in Ink. This problem also doesn't
> have the highest priority, I just never did understand the background.

I must have missed it when merging. I've added it back now.

> If there is any way, I could help to improve the text system let me
> know.

Ruler interaction is one of the areas that I haven't looked at yet, so
help there would be much appreciated.

Optimizations are also useful; there are many methods in NSLayoutManager
that could be rewritten to take advantage of the constraints on layout
NSLayoutManager has (eg. doing binary searches on the y-position). This
requires a bit of familiarity with the layout manager internals, though.

Resolving behavior issues in the typesetter would also be useful. I've
collected a bunch of them:

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/TextSystemIssues
http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/NSTextViewIssues

> Although we still have different positions on a few minor issues
> (I still thing merging GSLayoutManager and NSLayoutManger would be a
> good thing and I would also prefer to keep changes that break current
> code to a minimum), I think that your rework was the best thing that
> ever happend to the text system and would like to contribute to make it
> faster again.
> 
> Cheers
> Fred

- Alexander Malmberg