[secondcoming]

Is it even possible to write any text editor without some form of rope data structure?

[cschmidt]

Here's a paper reviewing the various choices, that is often mentioned in discussions around data structures for text editors:

https://www.cs.unm.edu/~crowley/papers/sds.pdf

[ben-schaaf]

VSCode uses a piece table (https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r...).

[canucker2016]

MS Word used piece table, which led to the "fast save" feature - which saved only the newer pieces.

[caconym_]

Gap buffers are the other classic option, and there are others too, e.g. piece tables.

[marssaxman]

Most certainly: gap buffers, piece tables, and line arrays are also popular choices.