[issue28840] IDLE not handling long lines correctly

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy added the comment:

Currently, the code displayed is the code saved and run when requested.  Your idea would require that IDLE keep a 'true' copy of the code separate from the 'display' copy in the Text widget, with the two being kept in sync except in special situations such as super long lines.  This would be an error prone process.  It would require either having two text widgets, one displayed, one not, kept nearly in sync, or writing a Python equivalent of the non-display part of the text widget.  Or the true copy could be a virtual copy represented by the edits required to restore the true copy from the display copy.  Any of these would be tedious, error prone, and would make editing slower. I rejected the idea of making tabs visible with a special character for the same reason.

I looked at the tk Text doc to see if the line length limitation is mentioned.  It is not that I could find ('2' occurs in the text, but no longer digit string).  It might be Windows-specific.  It is possible that there should be a new issue opened on the tcl/tk tracker, but more info should be collected first, to test on other OSes and directly with tcl/tk.  I have more pressing issues to work on ;-).

While looking, I read the entry on peer text widgets, which allow multiple views of the *same* underlying text data.  A peer can be restricted to a subset of lines but not part of a line or lines.  (There can also be different default fonts and insert cursor positions.)

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue28840>
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