Native text editor

[jade_nekotenshi]

I'm currently working on a native text editor for OPENSTEP, aiming for approximate feature parity with NEdit. I'll post a package here when it's ready.

(NEdit is already available through my fork of openstep-pkg, but you need CubXWindow or some other X server and Motif library, and then it's still an X11/Motif app).

[onionmixer]

I'm currently working on a native text editor for OPENSTEP, aiming for approximate feature parity with NEdit. I'll post a package here when it's ready.

(NEdit is already available through my fork of openstep-pkg, but you need CubXWindow or some other X server and Motif library, and then it's still an X11/Motif app).

If you end up making it...

1. Please add Unicode support.
2. Please also allow custom/separate input methods (IMEs) for Japanese, Korean, etc., on OPENSTEP.

........T.T

[jade_nekotenshi]

Let me look into how feasible that is. It seems to me that it shouldn't be terribly difficult, but OPENSTEP's integrated fonts don't include any CJK characters. That's not a showstopper I don't think but does make things more complicated.

I'll definitely see what goes into it.

[jade_nekotenshi]

Turns out full Unicode support is pretty hard unless a usable Type 1 Unicode font can be found - and Type 1 seems to only support up to 256 glyphs in a single font, which may mean this isn't practically doable. I am tweaking things so that it doesn't corrupt encodings, though.

I'd have to clank up both a custom TextView and custom input methods. It's not impossible but it introduces a huge bug surface area. Let me tag that one for the next major iteration and let people bang on what I've got for now. (Package coming probably later tonight).

[Rhetorica]

Let me look into how feasible that is. It seems to me that it shouldn't be terribly difficult, but OPENSTEP's integrated fonts don't include any CJK characters. That's not a showstopper I don't think but does make things more complicated.

I'll definitely see what goes into it.

Turns out full Unicode support is pretty hard unless a usable Type 1 Unicode font can be found - and Type 1 seems to only support up to 256 glyphs in a single font, which may mean this isn't practically doable. I am tweaking things so that it doesn't corrupt encodings, though.

You want 4.2J for this. I don't know every specific of how it differs from 4.2, but there are definitely pieces of software compiled specifically with Unicode support that won't work on non-J versions. (Specifically, the clipboard sharing functionality in Y. Hayakawa's vboxmouse.) I'll admit, I've never actually seen something that was undeniably Unicode text on normal NeXT; it might make sense if they just mapped 8-bit font codepoints into the Unicode space and only the J releases had multibyte encoding. (For whatever it's worth, Rhapsody descends from a tree with these features permanently enabled; you can select Japanese out of the box on the normal release in DR2, including the IME.)

That said, unlike 3.3J, the 4.2J image we have in circulation is a really crappy release; it doesn't have any of Canon's actual content (the localization files and the IME are missing!) and there's a spurious "Shell.app" wrapper with no binary in it—this is a Windows-only program introduced in YellowBox DR1 that they forgot to remove from the source tree.

Fortunately, I have a bunch of Korean and Japanese localization files for 4.2J here: http://archive.nextcommunity.net/language/ — this should be everything you need to test compatibility to @onionmixer's satisfaction. I believe the JapaneseUser.pkg.tar.gz listed there is most likely the missing data. These came from ftp.atlas.altexxanet.org, which has some pretty esoteric items like OpenStep for Solaris (both 1.0 and 1.1.) I tried to grab everything that looked unfamiliar from there, but there may be some oversights. I have yet to find any Chinese software, though several ObjectWare CDs have proof that such existed (I think it was Traditional, i.e. non-PRC, only.)

Speaking of East Asian support, @onionmixer, we know you have at least one piece of physical media in your collection that has never been preserved on the Internet, such as NS 3.2J. Any chance you'd be willing to make an ISO?

There is a real argument to be made that the whole community should switch over to 4.2J as our main driver since its functionality is a superset of 4.2.

[jade_nekotenshi]

OK, I think that makes things easier. I had come up with a hack that I was going to implement later, basically a custom TextView, plus using FreeType to render from a TrueType font that would be bundled with the editor for at least Cyrillic, Greek and CJK, plus some custom input methods, but using the bits already built for 4.2J should at least take care of the east Asian support. I might still need the hack to support Cyrillic and Greek.

[jade_nekotenshi]

Here's the first alpha release. Package attached, GitHub here.

Let me know what doesn't work, crashes, weirdness, missing features, etc!