Rich Text Support

[John-Val Rose]

Thanks Pedro for the explanation. Very helpful.

I was concerned that maybe only some posts to this list end up in my inbox but you’ve cleared that up for me now :-)

> On 9 Oct 2018, at 05:53, Pedro Duque Vieira <pedro.duquevieira at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Robert answered directly to me instead of to the whole openjfx thread (a mistake that sometimes happens). I replied earlier to the group with his email quoted below.
> 
> This mailing list stuff is sometimes a bit confusing.. I find forums and google groups a bit more user friendly :)
> 
> I hope that clarifies it. Cheers,
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 7:46 PM John-Val Rose <johnvalrose at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tom,
>> 
>> I think I must have missed a part of this thread.
>> 
>> Who is Robert? And which post are you extracting those quoted passages from to which you respond?
>> 
>> I look forward to your rebuilt editor BTW :-)
>> 
>> > On 9 Oct 2018, at 04:54, Tom Schindl <tom.schindl at bestsolution.at> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Hi,
>> > 
>> > as someone who has written a Code-Editor-Control (I don't talk about
>> > RichText) I can say that what Robert says is wrong and other examples
>> > like all Web-Based code editors (Monaco, Orion) show us it is perfectly
>> > possible implement well performing Code editor using a Scene-Graph.
>> > 
>> > The trick is as always you need to be virtual (ideally in both
>> > directions but as a minimum vertically). For code-editors an
>> > optimization you can use is that often you have monospaced fonts so you
>> > can very easily interpolate stuff.
>> > 
>> > Some more comments inline
>> > 
>> >> On 08.10.18 18:28, Pedro Duque Vieira wrote:
>> >> I'm not sure, but I think Robert might have only replied to me (probably by
>> >> mistake) and not the whole openjfx list as well. It has happened to me
>> >> before :)
>> >> He makes some points that are probably of interest to this discussion. If
>> >> his email didn't get to the openjfx mailing list, it is below.
>> >> 
>> >> I'd like to make some comments to the points he raised:
>> >> 
>> >> When I mentioned TextFlow I was mentioning it for the rich text display
>> >> part only. As I mentioned, for the editing, I think it would be good to
>> >> have more API in the JavaFX SDK to facilitate developing a Rich text
>> >> editor. Like I said, FontMetrics would be a nice addition, not just for
>> >> rich text editing but for anything that involves laying out text and other
>> >> things. So this would be very good to have. Right now you have to resort to
>> >> hacks when laying out text, and for some things you simply don't have the
>> >> API.
>> >> Other good additions to the API, which are also relevant to this
>> >> discussion, would be to be able to know which character has been clicked on
>> >> in a text node, either via mouse or touch. FontMetrics could also help with
>> >> this.
>> > 
>> > Text-Node has hit-testing so you get the character position as public API.
>> > 
>> >> 
>> >> When creating a Rich Text editor with a scene graph approach and retained
>> >> mode (vs using an approach like using Canvas), we'd have to use a technic
>> >> that doesn't use a Node for every character or word. Otherwise we will
>> > 
>> > This is correct. We are currently working on new version of our
>> > Code-Editor control and there we render 1 line with at most 4 Nodes (no
>> > matter how many colored sections you have) in case we have a mono-spaced
>> > font (something we simply defined as a pre-requisit for the moment)
>> > 
>> >> eventually have thousands of nodes in the scene which will kill performance
>> >> and memory. One of those techniques is to use virtualization, via the use
>> >> of a ListView for example. Each cell can be a TextFlow representing a line
>> >> that would automatically be re-used by the ListView. So I don't think we
>> >> must resort to using Canvas. Personally I prefer using a scene graph based
>> >> approach.
>> > 
>> > As I said above ListView like support at minimum but ideally you are
>> > virtual in both directions - something our rebuild code-editor control
>> > is going to support.
>> > 
>> > Tom
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > Tom Schindl, CTO
>> > BestSolution.at EDV Systemhaus GmbH
>> > Eduard-Bodem-Gasse 5-7. A-6020 Innsbruck
>> > Reg. Nr. FN 222302s am Firmenbuchgericht Innsbruck
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pedro Duque Vieira - https://www.pixelduke.com