Theory and Practice of Text Editors or A Cookbook for an Emacs

Abstract

A comprehensive summary of the available technology for implementing text editors. It is written to be a guide for the implementor of a text editor. It does not provide a finished, polished algorithm for any part of a text editor. Rather, it provides a breakdown of the problems involved and discusses the pitfalls and the available tradeoffs to be considered when designing a text editor. Specific reference is made to the relevant tradeoffs for an Emacs-type editor, a character-oriented, extensible display editor.