[xsl] Dimitre's Text Editor (was Re: [xsl] Should XSLT be used to generate a plain text document)?

[JBryant@xxxxxxxxx]

I am tempted to produce a simple text editor, totally controlled by an
XSLT stylesheet (similar to the way the XSLT calculator is totally
controlled by a stylesheet). All necessary functionality already
exists:

    Word breaking (tokenisation).

    Find/Replace.

    Text justification (str-split-to-lines pimplements left
justification, but it will not be a problem to shift the last word on
a line so that its last character is aligned on the right boundary.
One can even use the random number generator of FXSL in order to
randomly spread the few additional spaces between different words on
the line).

    Spelling checking -- demonstrated recently.

    Generation of alternative words having correct spelling (if I
remember well, I demonstrated on this list how this can be done using
FXSL 2-3 years ago)

    Word count/frequencies  -- demonstrated on this list by Mike Kay
not long ago.



Is there any other major text-editing feature I've missed?


Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev.

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Hi, Dimitre,

That's a neat idea. I can think of tons of good things for a text editor 
(I'm sure we all can). Here are a few that come to mind: Syntax 
highlighting, User-selectable font (family and size), Smart element 
insertion (so that I can quickly wrap one element around another in all 
the tagged markup languages). However, I recognize that you aren't trying 
to make a salable product. So I suppose sticking to just the very basics 
(similar to Notepad) is the wise course.

My only quibble so far is that I'd want to see the extra spaces for 
justification inserted evenly rather than randomly. Mind you, I never use 
right justification in a text editor anyway. However, if I did use it, I'd 
want it to be evenly done.

Just my $.02.

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)