The Craft of Text Editing, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1991 Emacs for the Modern World

Never before has a book been published that describes the techniques and technology used in writing text editors, word processors and other software. Written for the working professional and serious student, this book covers all aspects of the task. The topics range from user psychology to selecting a language to implementing redisplay to designing the command set. More than just facts are involved, however, as this book also promotes insight into an understanding of the issues encountered when designing such software. After reading this book, you should have a clear understanding of how to go about writing text editing or word processing software. In addition, this book introduces the concepts and power of the Emacs-type of text editor. This type of editor can trace its roots to the first computer text editor written and is still by far the most powerful editor available.

Introduction: What Is Text Editing All About?.- The Basic Get_Line.- The Forest.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- Chapeter 1: Users.- User Categories.- “Religion”.- User Goals.- Physiological Constraints.- Applying These Physiological Constraints.- Users Who Have Handicaps.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 2: User Interface Hardware.- Display Types.- Keyboards.- Graphical Input.- Communications Path Issues.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 3: Implementation Languages.- General Considerations.- Specific Language Notes.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- Chpater 4: Editing Models.- One-Dimensional Array of Bytes.- Two-Dimensional Array of Bytes.- List of Lines.- Paged Models.- Objects.- Dealing with Real Text.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 5: File Formats.- Text Files.- Binary Files.- Structured Files.- Where to Store the “Extra” information.- The Additional Information.- Internalization.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 6: The Internal Sub-Editor.- Basic Concepts and Definitions.- Internal Data Structures.- Procedure Interface Definitions.- Characteristics of Implementation Methods.- Implementation Method Overview.- Buffer Gap.- Linked Line.- Paged Buffer Gap.- Other Methods.- Method Comparisons.- Editing Extremely Large Files.- Difference Files.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- Chpater 7: Redisplay.- Constraints.- Procedure Interface Defenitions.- Considerations.- Redisplay Itself.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 8: User-Oriented Commands: The Command Loop.- The Core Loop: Read, Evaluate, Print.- Errors.- Arguments.- Rebinding.- Modes.- Changing Your Mind.- Macros.- Question to Probe Your Understanding.- 9: Command Set Design.- Responsiveness.- Consistency.- Permissiveness.- Progress.- Simplicity.- Uniformity.- Extensibility.- Modes.- Use of Language.- Guideline Summary.- Structure Editors.- Programming Assistance.- Command Behavior.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- 10: Emacs-Type Editors.- “What Do You Mean, ‘Emacs-type?’”.- The Command Set.- The Extended Environment.- Extensibility.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- Epilogue.- Questions to Probe Your Understanding.- Appendix A: A Five-Minute Introduction to C.- Case Conventions.- Data Types and Declarations.- Constants.- Pre-Defined Constants.- Procedure Structure.- Statements.- Operators.- Standard Library Functions Used in This Book.- Non-Standard Library Functions Used in This Book.- Appendix B: Emacs Implementations.- Acronyms.- Implementations Mentioned in My Thesis (Pre-1980).- GNU-Emacs.- What Is Copyleft?.- Newer Implementations Available for No Charge.- Newer Implementations Sold by Vendors.- Appendix C: The Emacs Command Set.- Notation.- Default GNU-Emacs Command List.- Help Commands.- Control-X (^X) Commands.- Control-X 4 Commands.- Meta (^ [) Commands.- The Author’ Command Set.- Appendix D: The TECO Command Set.- General Notation.- E-Commands.- F-Commands.- FS-Variables.- Appendix E: ASCII Chart.