[Alphacocoa-devel] Possible issues with saved state?

[Greg D. <gre...@in...>]

First of all, let me reiterate what a great job has been done in updating Alpha for OS X; every time I think I might need additional features in a
text editor, Alpha has already implemented them.  I don't know that I have any other application which has been my preferred choice for 20 years, and
which keeps moving forward.  Especially no application where the source is visible to all.

I've been writing some documentation lately, and one of the features I use in such situations is the "Text Wrapping" preference.  It's nice to have a
choice between line mode and paragraph mode for different types of document, because I write lists as often as blog posts.  Unfortunately, I can't
seem to locate a way to retain the text wrapping state in a document between saves; I know it's not currently in the "record window state" parameters,
but all I see in the preferences is "wrap on open" which applies to all documents.  Am I overlooking something, or is this a design choice?  I can
deal with setting the wrap globally, I think, but it would be handy to have it selectable on a per-document basis.

Another thing I stumbled across which may be a small bug: when changing something like the wrapping and/or window size/position, recording the window
state and then saving the document, the document re-opens with the top left corner of the window displaced downward by about 60 pixels.  The lower
left/right coordinates aren't disturbed.  Subsequent opens of saved documents retain this offset - I had thought perhaps it was attempting to tile or
overlap the windows, but it seems just to be applying a fixed offset from the upper left corner of the screen to the top left.  Curiously, if I reduce
the window size by resizing from the top of the window, making it yet smaller, that state seems to be retained.  Resizing it so that the top nestles
just below the status bar (where a default document is placed) and then saving does not retain the setting, but causes the window top left to be
displaced downward again on re-open.  Again, if this is a setting, I can't seem to locate it.

Related to the above, is seems that when enabling "record window state" and then executing the "save" command, the window state parameters appear to
be saved - but there is no visual indication that anything has been saved.  This action does not set either of the "buffer dirty" indicators or echo
anything in the status bar, which I can understand - it's not changing the buffer.  Again, if this is a design choice, fair enough; but it took me a
few tests to confirm that the window state was indeed being saved.  Perhaps a status message such as "state saved" might be helpful when the buffer
itself is not changed?  It works, so technically no change is needed, but I thought I'd bring up the subject.

If any of these are indeed bugs or possible enhancements, I'll gladly submit one or more tickets to get them properly into the tracking system.  But
if I'm just missing a preference setting or appropriate usage of the feature, I'd rather know that before submitting pointless messages to the
tracker. :-)  I appreciate the determination and effort devoted to enhancing the application!

-- 
| Greg Dunn                       | If you believe in things that    |
| gre...@in...               | you can't understand, then       |
| The Sultan of Slack(tm)         | you'll suffer... Superstition    |
| http://www.indy.net/~gregdunn/  | ain't the way.                   |
|                                 |                  Stevie Wonder   |