One area that we definitely want to improve with SyntaxEditor is the ability to have good response and performance when editing large files. In SyntaxEditor for WinForms, there are a number of options you can turn off to help improve performance, yet it would would be much better to be able to leave options on and still have decent performance. Also when editing huge documents, performance should still be considered good, not just satisfactory.
In our newer internal design that we're prototyping out in SyntaxEditor for WPF, we have already started implementing a number of improvements we've been brainstorming on for a long time. Let's call these new ideas SyntaxEditor Next since after the WPF version is completed, we'll probably be looking at implementing similar techniques in the WinForms version 5.0.
Here is a list of some of the improved areas (let's assume a large document is 10MB in size for these comparisons):
- Document loading - When loading a very large document, it may take 10-15 seconds to load and display in SyntaxEditor for WinForms. In SyntaxEditor Next, it loads and displays instantaneously.
- Typing performance - When editing a large document in SyntaxEditor for WinForms, there can be a noticeable delay when typing each character. With our SyntaxEditor Next design, there is almost no noticeable slowdown in typing.
- Word wrap activation - When switching to word wrap mode in SyntaxEditor for WinForms, very large documents might notice up to a several second delay before the switch is complete. In SyntaxEditor Next, the change is instantaneous.
- Word wrap memory - In SyntaxEditor for WinForms, word wrap mode took up a lot of additional memory when working with large files. In SyntaxEditor Next, it uses almost no additional memory.
The observations above are comparisons made on the same 10MB file with highlighting enabled.
Please note that while SyntaxEditor for WPF (SyntaxEditor Next prototype) doesn't have outlining or semantic parsing implemented yet, to compare apples to apples we turned off outlining and semantic parsing in the WinForms version. Therefore we are very optimistic that the performance results above can be maintained once outlining and semantic parsing are added to SyntaxEditor for WPF.