[platform-ui-dev] Problems with partitioning (writing an editor plugin)

["Bob Foster" <bob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The partition/color within partition idea is really clever, but I have had a
lot of trouble with it because its correctness depends on a number of
undocumented conditions. I certainly would have wasted less time had these
conditions been clearly stated, and I suspect others would, too.

Release 2.0 seems to exacerbate the problem by piling on more undocumented
conditions, but how can one tell? Maybe these existed in the author's mind
all along?

The first condition I have run afoul of, common to 1.0 and 2.0, is that
partitions can only extend themselves if they are at the end of the file.
For example, suppose you have the characters "<foo></foo>". If you insert a
'<' character between the tags like "<foo><</foo>" an appropriate scanner
will yield three partitions, "<foo>", "<" and "</foo>". However, if you now
insert a character after the '<' like "<foo><a</foo>", this will yield four
partitions, "<foo>", "<", "a" and "</foo" instead of the desired three
because the partition "<" is not rescanned, but the partition "</foo>".

2.0 piles on the pain by assuming that every partitioning rule can be
restarted in the middle. Some can't.

I say foo. Not to be excessively negative, but if there is a coherent design
in here somewhere, could it please be documented so people can not waste
time with it if it doesn't meet their needs?

Bob