[Qt-creator] Text editor architecture similar to Chrome browser

[Eike Ziller]

> On 26. Aug 2018, at 20:38, Szyk Cech <szykcech at spoko.pl> wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I have an idea to write new version of my text editor (not published - only for my personal usage). Now it is monolithic app. But new version I want to write in modular way.
> 
> I want:
> 
> + edition in 2 modes: text and hex (they can be plugins like in Qt Creator)
> 
> + plugins for every editor aspects: highlighting, spell checking, user actions in context menu and in main menu (like text speech and search phrase in the Internet, check word translation in the internet dictionary), search and replace
> 
> + should be resistant to editors or plugins failure
> 
> Two first points can be easily achieved by mimicry of the Qt Creator architecture (in true I don't need every Qt Creator features). But I am afraid that it is not true for third point.
> 
> Today I get some info about Chrome browser architecture from fairy old document: https://seclab.stanford.edu/websec/chromium/chromium-security-architecture.pdf , but I like that it is secure and fault resistant. I know I don't need such high security, but crash resistant architecture seems attractive to me.
> 
> I also know that in forthcoming Qt 5.12 Qt Remote Objects will be officially released. So maybe my simply text editor project will be great opportunity to use this state of the art module?!?
> 
> I think that maybe it is not so crazy idea to design text editor like multi process application?!? I mean to write thin kernel (like your core plugin) and implement editors (text and hex) in separate processes and design plugin system where each plugin resides in separate process. They can be load on demand (not every at start). And I think that it is possible to implement internal state diagnostic in order to detect failures in editors or in plugins.
> 
> Main problems what I see is:
> 
> 1) to design suitable Api for every part of my text editor (like you do for Qt Creator)
> 
> 2) efficient implementation of the editor text rendering
> 
> @1) I think I can study Qt Creator more carefully to understand every nuances - so this require work on my site
> 
> @2) I have questions to you:
> 
> a) Do you have any advice how should I rendering text in separate process and display it in main process (which displays Qt Gui)?

Afaik the Qt Quick Designer is doing that (with its “qmlpuppet" separate process), so maybe that can give some inspiration.
http://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git/tree/share/qtcreator/qml/qmlpuppet/qml2puppet

> b) Is there some Qt solution for this case or I need to write my own layer to cover Os specific shared memory Api?

There is QSharedMemory.

> c) Is Qt prepared for such cases like render QPlainText widget to the buffer instead to the screen?

QWidgets can be rendered to images/pixmaps:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qwidget.html#render

> I know this question is not directly related to Qt Creator, but I think it is advanced enough to ask experienced Qt Creators developers as Qt user forums probably can't answer to such details.
> 
> thanks and best regards

Have fun!
Br, Eike

-- 
Eike Ziller
Principal Software Engineer

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