Write-ing Applications: Design of an Extensible Text Editor as an Application Framework

Using an object−oriented approach, the text editor Write has been designed to be extensible while its basic structure has been kept small and simple. As its main extension concept, Write supports extensible objects floating in a text. An important result presented is that the extended editor can play the role of various dedicated applications. It can be stated that the editor together with its extension model constitutes an application framework of rather wide applicability. This paper presents the editing model chosen for Write and its effects on efficiency and ease of extension. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, several editor extensions are presented.