28 Dec 97 10:03, Frank Adam (3:635/728.21) wrote to andrew clarke:

 >>> If it would be easier (on the whole) to rewrite the code from scratch,
 >>> would this be a realistic approach?

 ac>> as many people have asked for that.  Obviously rewriting the Msged
 ac>> code isn't going to make the documentation instantly appear.  ;-)

 > No, but it would appear better and faster. ;-)

I should think so.

 > Btw, i've lost interest for the same reason you have, but it seems like
 > there is a demand, hence i've reinstalled the source now and playing
 > with it again.. Scared enough yet ? :)

:-)  I'd rather your messagebase than mine!  *grin*

 ac>> It would be better if a lot of the code was rewritten, especially the
 ac>> user interface (input/output) and messagebase code.  That might sound
 ac>> simple enough, but it's actually about 60% of the Msged code.  The

 > Actually the internal spell checker i was writing is quite ok, but i
 > have the same problem, it would be easier to re-write wrap.c (at least)
 > to implement it. The code there is quite inefficient anyway, but mainly
 > it lacks a word highlight and proper cut & paste function, both of
 > which is quite important for the speller, not to mention a nice feature
 > for the user.

All of those features would be good to see.  I don't have much experience
with the internal editor, but if the features you mention existed (not so
much the spelling checker, but the proper highligthing, copy/cut &
paste features) and the key assignments could be reprogrammed, I'd use it. 
=)

Lately I've been using an editor named BOXER.  7.5 allows you to
cut/copy/paste text between the Windows 3.1 or 95 clipboard and clipboard A
of BOXER.  I don't know how it works, because it's a 16-bit DOS program and
not a native Windows program, but it does work.  Ralf Brown's Interrupt
List may have some clues on how it communicates with Windows...

BTW, you mention a spelling checker, which reminded me of an e-mail thread
that we had going several months ago, but I think I forgot to reply to one
of your messages...

 > The way the internal editor is written it seems like a mammoth task to
 > just "plug in" those codes..

No offense to David Begley, but his code to display the line/column cursor
coordinates in the internal editor had (still has?) a few flaws.  From
memory the line number displayed got out-of-sync with the actual line
number being edited after the user had highlighted a couple of lines and
cut it to Msged's clipboard.  That should've been a simple task, but the
existing code makes it overly complicated.

 > I shall look into doing just that though, but i don't expect to have it
 > ready for the next release.  ..Actually when is that ? ;-)

1998.

 >>> The problem I would see in rewriting the code is that _some_ capable
 >>> programmer would have to spend quite a lot of time on doing this,

 ac>> Right.  And it will probably end up being me, too!  :-)

 > Well, if you decide to do that, and need help i can do some easy stuff.
 > :-)

I've pretty much decided to do a rewrite.  The release of Msged 4.20 along
with documentation is currently holding me back from writing any new code
though.

 > I reckon it would be a good idea, it would be a good advert for Vidmgr
 > as well. ;-) Surely you'd use it ? ("Surely" does not need to reply)

I doubt it.  And don't call me Surely.  =)

In hindsight, VidMgr lacks any proper interface to allow it to be properly
ported to UNIX using NCurses (ie. FreeBSD, Linux, etc). NCurses (and the
Windows 95 console subsystem to a certain extent) really requires any
screen output to be optimised (and therefore buffered) by the application
prior to it being sent to the appropriate platform-dependent API call. 
With NCurses, you can call many screen-write functions sequentially, then
tell the API to output it to stdout all at once, and it will optimise the
output depending on the terminal type.  I tried fudging this sort of
behavior into VidMgr but it made it too incompatible with previous code.

When the time is right, I will continue writing a suitable video output
library that I started a few months ago, and use it in Msged.  I know how
to make it compatible with NCurses that I've had more experience with that
API.  I'll probably release the library independantly, like I did with
VidMgr.

-- randy{at}zws.com

--- Msged/386 4.20 beta 4