[Monodevelop-devel] Text Editor API GetCharAt

[Mike Krüger]

Hi

We've 3 levels:

ITextSource -> IDocument -> TextEditor

And they inherit from each other. So if you've a text source you're 
having either the GetCharAt or indexer way of accessing the characters.

With the new API I want it to make it easier to write code for the 
ITextSource or IDocument level and use a text editor object with it. 
Depends on the way we want to look at the whole thing.

If we treat the text as char[] and lines, syntax highlighting, text 
markers etc. is just meta data to the char array I think the indexer 
makes sense. If we say the work with text is more complex and maybe the 
O(1) cost of getting a char will change then the GetCharAt approach is 
better.
I'm not really certain which way is the best.

But one thing is for sure: We either have the indexer at all levels or not.

Regards
Mike
> I think it is obvious and intuitive at the Text level, but for Document
> and Editor then it becomes a bit less intuitive.
>
> As Mike said, the Document has lines as well as characters. How often is
> someone going to want to use the index as a line vs as a character?
> Which would you assume is which? I think it is probably clearer to keep
> the methods at those levels so that you don't have to check the return
> type to know what you're indexing.