CodeArea (almost) ready to support a rich-text editor

[Tomas Mikula]

I made a bunch of improvements to CodeArea [1], most notably two:
1. line wrapping
2. arbitrary (generic) style information (instead of just style classes
before). Your style information can be anything, as long as you provide a
way (read lambda function) to either
    a) convert it to a CSS string; or
    b) apply it directly to a Text node.

This means that CodeArea can now support a rich-text editor.

What you might be missing is paragraph-level styles (for e.g. headings,
text alignment) and that Undo now works on plain text, so if you undo an
redo, you lose your style information. These will be coming in the next
year, so you can start hacking your rich-text editor now.

Regards,
Tomas

[1] https://github.com/TomasMikula/CodeAreaFX


On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Tomas Mikula <tomas.mikula at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Jonathan.
>
> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Jonathan Giles
> <jonathan.giles at oracle.com> wrote:
> > Tomas,
> >
> > Very nice work! :-)
> >
> > The first step in the process to contribute features / bug fixes back
> > into OpenJFX is to create a Jira issue (or find one that covers the
> > topic). In the case of styled text ranges I don't believe a Jira issue
> > exists, so feel free to open a new issue. This will be the way we can
> > see what is popular and still outstanding in JavaFX, and of course
> > discuss details.
> >
> > I'm not clear on how closely your approach is related to Tom's, but
> > perhaps there is sufficient overlap there that you can collaborate.
>
> I think the main differences are:
> 1. Tom's StyledTextArea assigns styles, while my CodeArea assigns
> style classes. I think my approach is easier to work with, but less
> powerful (you can only use styles pre-defined in a stylesheet, thus
> you can't implement a rich text editor on top of CodeArea).
> 2. StyledTextArea's API assigns styles for the whole content at once,
> CodeArea assigns one range at a time. I think both approaches have
> their use and I plan to add support for batch assignment for
> performance reasons.
> 3. AFAIK, StyledTextArea does not support text selection.
> 4. Compared to TextArea, CodeArea supports detailed change events
> (which part of text was replaced) via TextChangeListener
> (
> http://tomasmikula.github.io/CodeAreaFX/codearea/control/TextChangeListener.html
> ).
> Not sure about StyledTextArea.
>
> > This
> > may help to improve your API and implementation prior to it being
> > considered for integration into OpenJFX, and will of course help to
> > prevent duplication of effort.
>
> I don't consider the API to be final, quite opposite, I expect changes
> arising from the community and from my own needs. I'm open to feedback
> and suggestions.
>
> Regards,
> Tomas
>
> >
> > Keep up the great work and be sure to keep me in the loop of your
> > progress :-)
> >
> > -- Jonathan
> >
> > On 8/10/2013 2:48 a.m., Tomas Mikula wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I implemented a text control that supports assigning style classes to
> >> portions of text. It is meant to be used for syntax highlighting.
> >>
> >> https://github.com/TomasMikula/CodeAreaFX
> >>
> >> The code is based on the original TextArea code. This implies the
> >> license to be GPLv2 with the Classpath Exception. I would be happy to
> >> contribute it back to the OpenJFX project.
> >> The idea of using a ListView of TextFlows is borrowed from Tom
> >> Schindl's StyledTextArea
> >> (http://fxexperience.com/2013/02/interview-with-tom-schindl-2/).
> >>
> >> Check out the demos and the APIs. Feedback really appreciated. Any
> >> help with the issues
> >> (https://github.com/TomasMikula/CodeAreaFX/wiki/Known-Issues) would be
> >> awesome.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Tomas
> >
>