🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Griffiths writes
> As for not being able to copy RTF, this is a problem also shared by that
> other "standard" app, WordPerfect. The reason is that neither program uses
> the Text object. They must output postscript directly (ugh) thus avoiding
> the object-oriented inheritance of features like cut-and-paste of rich  
text.
> 
> It would be interesting to know *why* they didn't use the Text object.

Because the Text object is a piece of garbage, and if you want to
do anything like kerning, leading, hyphenation, or even flowing text
from one column to another, you have to throw away the Text object and
write your own.  It's a shame, but it's necessary, unfortunately.  We
lobbied NeXT for months to upgrade the Text object so we wouldn't have
to re-invent the wheel again for PasteUp, but it isn't going to get
improved until at least 4.0.

Sigh.  So much for object-oriented software.  We now have as many
independent text-manipulation engines on the NeXT as there are products,
almost: Illustrator, Virtuoso, PasteUp, FrameMaker, WordPerfect,
TouchType, Archetype, and I presume Pages all have incompatible Text
objects that can't cut and paste high-level text between them.

We're trying to get the ball rolling on at least cooperating on some
Pasteboard formats that will improve this situation, but it's pretty
messy (although no worse than any other platform at the moment, but
things like the Font Panel and the Color Picker make you wish you
could have that kind of compatibility for Text, too).

--
 Glenn Reid        		NeXTmail: glenn@rightbrain.com
 RightBrain Software		415-326-2974 (NeXTfax 326-2977)
 Palo Alto, California