Newbie question about text encoding

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 3:00 AM, alister
<alister.nospam.ware at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I think there is a case for bringing back the overlay file, or at least
> loading larger programs in sections
> only loading the routines as they are required could speed up the start
> time of many large applications.
> examples libre office, I rarely need the mail merge function, the word
> count and may other features that could be added into the running
> application on demand rather than all at once.

Downside of that is twofold: firstly the complexity that I already
mentioned, and secondly you pay the startup cost on first usage. So
you might get into the program a bit faster, but as soon as you go to
any feature you didn't already hit this session, the program pauses
for a bit and loads it. Sometimes startup cost is the best time to do
this sort of thing.

Of course, there is an easy way to implement exactly what you're
asking for: use separate programs for everything, instead of expecting
a megantic office suite[1] to do everything for you. Just get yourself
a nice simple text editor, then invoke other programs - maybe from a
terminal, or maybe from within the editor - to do the rest of the
work. A simple disk cache will mean that previously-used programs
start up quickly.

ChrisA

[1] It's slightly less bloated than the gigantic office suite sold by
a top-end software company.