FxEditor

Why

Nearly all Java text editors, Swing and FX alike, suffer from one deficiency: inability to work with large data models, such as logs or query results.

The goal of this project is to provide a professional FX text component that is capable of handling billions of lines, provides syntax highlighting, multiple carets and multiple selection, rich text capabilities, embedded images and embedded components.

The main idea which allows for all these features is separation of the editor and underlying data model. The data model then can be made as simple as a contiguous in-memory byte array, or as complex as memory-mapped file with a concurrent change log that enables editing of a very large files.

Features

• supports up to 2^31 lines of text
• multiple selection and carets
• supports syntax highlight

Try It Out

The project is at a very early stage: less than 29% of all identified features is currently implemented.

To see how little is implemented, launch FxEditorDemoApp.java

Example

public class MainWindow extends FxWindow
{
	public MainWindow()
	{
		super("TestFxEditorWindow");
		setTitle("FxEditor Demo");
		setSize(600, 700);
		
		// data model
		FxEditorModel m = new TestFxColorEditorModel();
		// editor component is a Pane
		FxEditor ed = new FxEditor(m);
		ed.setMultipleSelectionEnabled(true);
		// add to layout		
		setCenter(ed);
	}
}

See MainWindow.java

Warning

This project is not ready for production. Mutable (editable) text models are not yet implemented.

The editor relies on JavaFX PrismTextLayout to properly render proportional unicode text, which results in performance issues when trying to render very long lines (millions of symbols), making it unsuitable for projects that have to deal with such files, like programming editors or log viewers. A fixed-width replacement FxTextEditor is currently being worked on.

Similar Projects

Tomas Mikula's RichTextFX.

See Also

Text editors based on JavaFX TextLayout exhibit inadequate performance when dealing with models that have millions of characters on a single line, for example when viewing logs. A monospaced component such as FxTextEditor might be a better choice.

License

This project and its source code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and you should feel free to make adaptations of this work. Please see the included LICENSE file for further details.