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TextEditor

2007-02-24. OK, now I want to save all my notes as text. I was going over Euphoria's database.e file, looking for ways to make the code "safe" (so that it never put the file into a corrupt state, even in the middle of saving a record or deleting a table), and at some point the idea of trusting my notes to a file format this complex made me itchy. Of course, the reason I was looking into using a binary format in the first place was so I could assign IDs to notes and find them that way. But then, HTML works by assigning names to things. Why couldn't I just open a text file and let the text editor just run a background thread to get the locations of the notes in the file?

So now I'm back to storing notes as plain text. If I want my data to be recoverable, and usable on any platform I may want or need to use, then there is no substitute for plain text.

Some notes:

• Living in text files (also: Life inside one big text file; My Big-Arse Text File)
• I want to be able to view multiple text files as a single database.
• I want to be able to view individual "notes" or "records" within a text file.
• I might have rules for splitting a file into "records." For example:
  • Note files:
    • The text that marks the start of a note is a line containing only a colon, a hyphen, a hyphen, and a colon.
    • The title of the note might be on the next line that contains the colon-hyphen-hyphen-colon but also contains text after the second colon.
  • Euphoria files:
    • The text that marks the start of a note is a line that begins with "function", "procedure", "global function", or "global procedure".
    • The title of the note is the name of the function or procedure.
• Problems with other software I've tried:
  • Microsoft Word: Proprietary format (can't use it on Linux or Mac).
  • TiddlyWiki: Very slow when you have more than a certain number of records (around 3000). (It runs in Javascript in your web browser.)
  • PmWiki: Best thing I've found so far: As long as you have a web browser, you can use PmWiki. But how do you back stuff up? And I'd like to be able to grab large numbers of items based on keywords, sort them, and output them in a larger format.
• I might have rules for extracting comments (or other special lines) into a list of bookmarks (i.e., click on a link to go to a specific line in the file). In Euphoria files, comments begin with a double hyphen, from anywhere on the line.
• Compare FlashNote and InfoNote (for loading a blank note fast). Maybe my program needs a "default" file that is always open so you can jot down random information at any time. Also check out NoteLens, WikidPad.
• Text needs to be saved automatically. There should be previous versions of notes/files saved somewhere, and there should always be the option to view previous versions of the current note.
• The editor should have its own "proprietary" format -- text files with a specific extension, with special characters used to indicate note boundaries. The editor will know that it can create notes with dates, version numbers, and other metadata. (Other text files, such as source-code files, don't have provisions for metadata.)
• I want the program to have a "card mode" where you display certain notes in movable windows. You can move the windows around like index cards.
• I want queries -- searches that return lists of matching notes.
• I want threads -- note editing is handled by one thread; another thread handles loading, saving, searching, organizing, and indexing files.
• If a file can be divided into notes, then each note in a long file can be collapsed. (Thus would "code folding" be implemented.)
• Enso lets you hold down the Caps Lock key and type in a command; you activate the command by releasing the Caps Lock key. On the other hand, TextMate (for the Mac) offers tag triggers -- you type in a word and hit Tab in order to do something.
• Now here's another thought: Some existing programs offer code folding. Perhaps I could implement notes as "routines" that could be folded, if the program had the right syntax file?
• If you want to add text-processing commands to the editor, have a look at Mass File Editor for inspiration.