A page to collect ideas for improving Tk's text widget, and to list current limitations.
Vince has placed a work-in-progress patch at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=791292&group_id=12997&atid=312997 which addresses many of these issues.
My biggest (and only) frustration with the text widget is that it is too slow or weak. Loading really large files into it is very slow and painful. That renders apps like Tkdiff or Tkgrep practically useless. -- RS: Well, comparing with Notepad, Word or such, text still loads quite acceptably, if you load the file line by line with updates in between - start reading on top, while bottom still loads. Even on a slow iPaq, iRead: a Gutenberg eBook reader is usable for files of say 400 KB (where PocketWord bails out at about 180KB)
I suppose you're right, but... Notepad and Word??? Were you out of good parameters when you wrote that?
MGS [2003/08/22] - I would like to see Move cursor by display line in a text widget a standard feature. I guess it should be optional (and keep the current default method of cursor control for backwards compatibility).
I agree with RS; I think it can also be said that the "uselessness" of an app is partly related to how the app is written. For example, tkdiff now works by leaving the whole window blank until all diffs have been processed. It is possible to write tkdiff where it would display data as it is available 1, 10 or 100 lines at a time, making it come up and be usable significantly faster. True, viewing the last diff willl take just as long but most people use tools like tkdiff top down.
That's not to say I don't want the widget to be faster, but I do think it's a stretch to say tkdiff or tkgrep is "practically useless".