Text window properties

<cheek>
	<tongue>
		Because a text window isn't anything until text has been 
        entered into it, and because it is something I can see that 
        has a width and a height, I am fooled into believing that 
        the text window will behave in the same way that an A4 page 
        behaves in a word processor.
        <br />
		Consequently, when I enter enough text, images, tables, 
        lists, etc. to reach the lower limit of the text window 
        window, I become exceedingly frustrated that I haven't a 
        bit of space between where I am currently within (i.e. at the 
        end of) my text, and the end of the text window window.
        <br />
		DEVONthink behaves in the same way and also frustrates me. 
        <br />
		Neither do so in a "*throw my suitcase onto the tracks and 
        smoke a pipe*" way, rather a "*grr, I suppose I'll just have 
        to press enter seventeen times until it looks pleasing to my 
        eye*" way.
        <br />
		Can anyone offer a remedy for this sickness? I'm beggin' ya.
	</tongue>
</cheek>

:slight_smile:

Perhaps there’s an assumption that there is an “end” to the text pane, and a pre-determined amount of space between the top and the bottom of the text entry area. There is not. Nor is there a preset dimension to the window in TextEdit, or any other text editor. The window isn’t a blank canvas (like a piece of paper) – it’s just a visual artifact.

But, doesn’t Word, Pages, behave the same way? We paste an image in Pages, and we still have to manually add new lines after the image so that we can add more text etc.

First I would like to note that the “sickness” I mention above is my own, and not that of either Tinderbox or DEVONthink.

No, they don’t. There is always a bit of empty space on view. Even when we are at the end of a page there are margins and footers that create space between the lower edge of the window and where we are in our text.

That’s because these things exist. The page is there, and the margins create a visual space between the bottom of our text and the bottom edge of the window.

If I extend the height of the text window to fill my screen the space I want is there, but I am eventually faced with the same frustration once my text fills the height of the screen.

The ability to add some padding/margin to the bottom of the text would work but I don’t see any option or attribute that offers it.

By whom I wonder. Not me.

I know, and I find it unsettling.

:grinning:

1 Like

Uh oh, I’m in trouble.
:worried:

Pages and Word (in page layout view) assume that you are writing on a page of some fixed, physical size. This makes sense because they are, in essence, intended for writing print documents. You’re typing on an 11” piece of paper with an 1” margin at the bottom.

Tinderbox, DEVONthink, BBEdit, Mail.app, TextEdit, Evernote and Sublime Text are all intended for electronic notes that might have any length, and so when you approach the bottom of the window, there you are*.

* There is, in fact, quite a bit of work devoted by these programs to handling the bottom of the window. Most allow a small fixed margin at the bottom of the scrolling text. Some, seeing a return at the end of the text, may scroll up an extra line or two. Some programs — Scrivener? — offer a “typewriter” mode in which the text is scrolled up in some circumstances closer to the center of the pane.

Yes, interesting. I wonder whether the presentation of text within a default Tinderbox text window, which uses a font that is not fixed-width and can be styled in many ways, makes this appear more pronounced (to me); i.e. styling text puts me into a mode of thinking that is not satisfied by the application’s appearance and produces a negative response.

I just discovered this option in BBEdit’s preferences that does what I was trying to describe.