How to build a simple text editor?

[lostfile1]

I'm I'm not really that much of a coder but say if I wanted to make something like a simple text editor for gecko os where should I start

[fachat]

Hi lostfile, if you really want to build a simple editor, I'll suggest the following:

Regarding GeckOS:

• look at the apps/common.a65 getopts method to see how to re-use it for command line options (and potentially other calls you might need like converting numbers to ASCII)
• get familiar with the lib6502 API for loading the saving files. This will be more stable as file interface than the kernal interface.
• Also note that some drives can not do a direct overwrite (e.g. Commodore disk drives have a bug) It's probably better to save the file under a new name, delete the original, and rename the new file to the old name
• Also, get familiar with the memory interface API in lib6502 as you will most likely need to dynamically allocated memory. Don't do fine grain allocation via lib6502 though, it has its overhead. Rather
• look at the tcdefs.i65 file for what you can currently do with the console output (like cursor movement, sub-window definitions, character attributs)
• currently there is no way to get back the geometry of the screen from the console, but assume it is not always the same. So, make it a variable, potentially use cmdline params to set other values if needed, until geo feedback is possible
• I don't remember if there currently is a way to set the console to direct mode, where every key stroke is passed to the program, even cursor keys etc. This would be required unless you fall back to something like the original "vi" cursor/edit/mode handling where only normal typewriter chars are used (plus ESC).

Regarding implementing an editor:

• you need to understand the memory structure you are using to store the file contents. E.g. do you want to do line-based storage? It helps doing some edit operations, and you could do line-based undo, but is more complicated in memory handling
• any probably many more

Writing an editor is not an easy task, so start small and don't get overwhelmed.

Let me know if you have any questions / requests for features