It would be great to be able to add custom extensions to Te
Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:04 pm
Rather than exposing some library API or COM interface the simplest thing would be to add a STDIN/STDOUT filter that could be applied to any selected text. This would allow powerful extension yet require almost no learning on the part of the user.
For example, I could use TextPad's Tool feature to setup a custom program to be used as a filter. To use the filter I would select a block of text in TextPad; then I would trigger the filter from the Tools menu. TextPad would start my program and pass the selected text to the STDIN. My program would process the text then print results back on STDOUT. Finally, TextPad would take the output from STDOUT of my program and use it to replace the selected text in my document.
You could write extensions in any scripting language. I'm surprised that TextPad's Tool feature cannot already do this. It's almost there. It can pass some arguments to an external tool and it can capture output, but this doesn't give you enough to write a filter.
Yours,
Noah
For example, I could use TextPad's Tool feature to setup a custom program to be used as a filter. To use the filter I would select a block of text in TextPad; then I would trigger the filter from the Tools menu. TextPad would start my program and pass the selected text to the STDIN. My program would process the text then print results back on STDOUT. Finally, TextPad would take the output from STDOUT of my program and use it to replace the selected text in my document.
You could write extensions in any scripting language. I'm surprised that TextPad's Tool feature cannot already do this. It's almost there. It can pass some arguments to an external tool and it can capture output, but this doesn't give you enough to write a filter.
Yours,
Noah