RE: Lout gui

[Alex Kellett]

> I've got some ideas about how to make Lout interactive, even on page 99 of a
> document, by using tools which make memory transactional so you can save and
> restore checkpointed memory images.  Have you considered using Display
> PostScript (or Display GhostScript) for display issues?  This would be a
> perfect fit for Lout, of course, since it already generates PostScript.

I heard about this a while back but did'nt think of using it. Do you 
think it would be possible to get it to the speed that Word (etc.) offers?

> 
> The main idea would be to run through the document and checkpointing at
> various points like every few paragraphs or so--this would be tweakable (how
> long to restore a checkpoint v. how long to process this part of the
> document).  Keep track of which checkpoints produced which page.  To
> re-render a paragraph jump to the checkpoint in the stream just ahead of
> that paragraph and then shove the new lout code through until that page gets
> emitted.  It's almost random-access.  Lout seems optimized for low-memory
> usage, so I would expect the size of a checkpoint file to stay relatively
> constant, no matter how far into the document you are.
> 
> Then I would do a simple diff of the DPS output to what is on the screen so
> that only things that have changed would need to be re-rendered, if that is
> a performance issue.
> 

Has anyone tested lout's performance?, could it be optimized further?

Alex

> Monty
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:       Alex Kellett [SMTP:address@hidden
> > Sent:       Monday, May 17, 1999 4:43 AM
> > To: Lout
> > Subject:    Lout gui
> > 
> > To anyone interested,
> > 
> > I'm just about to start a nearly-WYSIWYG editor for lout, i'll be putting
> > it
> > under GPL (what is lout's license?). If anybody has started such a 
> > project or heard of the starting of one then could they reply with info 
> > of the project?. I become interested in writing a gui on seeing LyX, and 
> > a lot of my ideas for the project will be based on LyX / Micro$oft Word.
> > The central idea being a style system as advanced as LyX but with the 
> > ease of use of Word, and a greatly improved diag/eq editing system.
> > 
> > If anybody has any ideas or would like to aid the project (later on in 
> > development - I would prefer to keep it closed until sep '99) then I 
> > would be gratefull for any response.
> > 
> > TIA,
> > 
> > Alex Kellett
> > 
>