[dataflow]

> I recently launched a text editor for iOS that uses TextKit 2 and is highly performant with files of 5,000 lines (I tested with Moby Dick from Project Gutenberg)

I'm so confused by this comment. 5,000 lines is an absolutely minuscule size. Even the file you tested with is longer than that -- I'm seeing > 22,000 lines in [1]. Even Window's built-in Notepad doesn't flinch when opening something that small.

Text viewers need to handle files that are two orders of magnitude larger, at least. I easily have JSON files that are hundreds of thousands of lines long, and CSV & log files that are even longer.

[msephton]

I'm going from memory here, time marches on never-ending, so please forgive me. I conflated two things: my performance test results are from the first 5,000 lines of Moby Dick. Why 5,000? One user has a 5,000 line taskpaper note file. But the whole 22,000 line book loaded and scrolled and edited just fine (after I fixed some bad assumptions that resulted in bad code). On iOS, I think if you're working on a file of 5,000 lines then something might be wrong, and if you're working on a file of 22,000 lines well I don't know what to say.

[dataflow]

I definitely need to edit files that are hundreds of thousands of lines once in a while. Nothing wrong with it, I think you're just assuming it's source code or such when it isn't. It's often data manipulation (CSV, JSON, etc.) and it feels like torture when the editor can't handle it. I've even opened multi-gigabyte text files in my editor and needed to edit them sometimes.

[msephton]

That's cool, understood. Whilst I don't think you would be using my app to edit those files, it could do it. Though I haven't tested the multi gigabyte size on iOS.

[basch]

Did you look at the app? It's a todo list. The idea of a multi gigabyte todo list makes me uneasy.

[msephton]

Good point! It's a plain text outliner, but i use it as for tasks/todo. Most features were added for people other than me!

[tnorthcutt]

> On iOS, I think if you're working on a file of 5,000 lines then something might be wrong, and if you're working on a file of 22,000 lines well I don't know what to say.

Some people use an iPad as their main at-a-desk/stationary computing device, so that might not be as much of an edge case as you'd think. But maybe it still is; maybe those people aren't prone to editing large text files.