[visarga]

I invented the "piece table" data structure independently, while writing a DOS text editor in 1990s, presented it at a symposium in my faculty and got laughed off. 20 years later I stumble into this PDF describing it as a worthwhile data structure. LOL

[martanne]

Since I've recently implemented a text editor based on a piece table myself, I spent some time researching where the concept was first used.

One of the first references (1974) I found was to the Bravo text editor for the Alto from Xerox PARC.

"Alto User’s Handbook" http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/15a-A...

Then in 1985 a text editor called Lara by J. Gutknecht who in the following years joined Wirth to build Project Oberon whose text management system is also based on a piece table.

"Concepts of the text editor Lara" http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98....

If somebody as other, in particular earlier references, that would be interesting.

My recent implementation: https://github.com/martanne/vis/blob/master/text.c