Jeremy Bowers wrote: > The problem is that if you're really looking for performance, it may > differ based on the characteristics of the text and the quality of the > target computer, the platform (which you don't mention; GTK may scream in > Linux and make you scream in Windows...), etc., and there may be no one > person who can give you a firm "This is the best solution for your > situation" answer.
Also, it must be said that thousands of lines of text in a GUI control may not be necessary. Do the users really need to be able to scroll through that much text all at once in the general case, or do they perhaps only ever need to see the last few dozen lines? Could they instead "page" through the text in swallowable morsels, say a couple hundred lines at a time? Python can handle gargantuan amounts of text with little noticable performance penalty, while GUI controls aren't necessarily designed for that. What I'm getting at is that you could still have the entire string in memory, but only feed portions of that string to the GUI text control at a time. I'm jumping in here - perhaps the OP already told us what the application is, but I'm curious why it is necessary to have thousands of lines displayed and editable all at once, and wonder if the design should be reconsidered. I know that native Windows controls in particular tend to get really squirrly and unpredictable once you push into thousands of lines. -- pkm ~ http://paulmcnett.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list