Hi...

For my first somewhat successfull "real" OS/2 program, I just completed
a program that views ASCII files.  (I have always been annoyed at OS/2's
lack of a text-mode file viewer...no more!)

It lets you scroll up and down a file, page up/down, and go to beginning and
end of the file.

Question: Even though I've already done it, what would be the best way
to allocate memory for the file you're viewing?  I did it by openning
the file, asking OS/2 what the size is, then calling DosAllocMem to
get one big chunk.  I then read it all at once with DosRead with the
buffer size set to the length of the file.  This seems to work great,
and is fast ... even with the 1MB+ file list for OS/2 Shareware!

If you guys were writing a viewer/editor, would you allocate one big chunk,
or would it be best to save memory and split it up, paging the file in
as necessary?

Also, when accessing adjacent lines (if the user presses an arrow key)
I currently search for the previous/next CR.  This seems to work and
isn't apparently slow, but it seems like there might be a better way.
Would it be a good idea to allocate an array of pointers to the beginning
of each line?  That would require some setup work and more memory, but
may be easier to deal with when I add more features to the program later.

Overall, it works pretty well...and best of all, the EXE is an amazingly
small 12K! (compiled with Watcom 10)

Any ideas on the above would be appriciated.

Also, would anyone be interested in having the program?  I could U/L it
to OS/2 Shareware if there's interest.
  
___
 X ATP/OS2 1.42 X I used up all my sick days, so I called in dead!

--- Maximus/2 2.01wb