Lists, regex, wptext, Clay, pictures

1. The internal format for lists is going to get an overhaul before 5.0. Since there's no Apple Event Manager on Windows, we couldn't rely on the system to manage lists for us. This is good news, because the new format is another sub-class of outline. It may be possible, time-permitting, for lists to be editable using the outline editor.

2. We've received the source code for the regex UCMD from Danis. We plan to integrate it into the kernel for 5.0, cross-platform.

There's a lot of change behind the scenes in 5.0. We're using a new toolkit we licensed for wptext objects and all other text editing. So there are glitches relating to that. Cmd-double-clicking is now not working if there are non-blank characters surrounding a dotted id. Watch out for other similar glitches, and please report them on Frontier-work or on the bug-base site.

Another interesting fact, the outliner in 5.0 is Clay Basket. It had some features for outline display that Frontier never had. It will be possible to turn these features on after 5.0. Also, a little known fact, Clay had the ability to display outline headings with variable line height. This will make it possible to turn Frontier's outliner in to a great text editing environment. After this feature goes in, I doubt if I will ever use wptext windows.

One more random comment -- I don't think we should push Picture windows in 5.0. They're pretty anachronistic as they stand now. PICT format is Mac-only. GIF and JPEG are the prevalent graphics standards now (highlights the missing feature of the web, vector graphics, but that's another story). Does anyone know where we can license a cross-platform library for GIF and JPEG display?

Sun, Sep 28, 1997 at 9:29:11 AM by DW