About WASTE

Introduction
Feature Overview
Version History

Downloadable Files
Mailing List
Transitioning to WASTE 3.0

Introduction

WASTE is a text editing library for Mac OS programmers: a piece of software that allows developers of Macintosh applications to add text display and editing features to their own programs. WASTE stands for WorldScript-Aware Styled Text Engine, although nowadays, that acronym is no longer accurate, since WASTE 3.0 no longer relies on WorldScript technology, but uses ATSUI instead.

The WASTE 1.3 Documentation (a PDF document) is available online.

Feature Overview

The main features of WASTE 1.x were:

TextEdit-like API.
Memory-based editor, text size limited only by memory (no 32K barrier).
Fully WorldScript-aware: supports double-byte scripts (Japanese, Chinese and Korean) and bidirectional scripts (Arabic and Hebrew).
Integrated inline input for double-byte scripts.
Built-in Undo.
Drag-and-drop text editing.
Fully justified text.
Extensible architecture for embedding objects (e.g., pictures) in the text.
Support for command-clicking of URLs using Internet Config.
Customizable low-level hooks for drawing and measuring text.

The last version in the 1.x series is 1.3, released in January 1998. More information related to WASTE 1.x can be found on the original WASTE page maintained by Dan Crevier.

The WASTE 2.x series added the following enhancements:

Paragraph-level formatting, including word processor-style tabs.
Additional character styles (strikethrough, subscript and superscript, etc.).
Unlimited multiple undo/redo.
Unicode translation.
Carbonized codebase supporting a wide range of OSes, CPUs and executable formats, from 68K to PowerPC Mach-O.
New APIs for printing and string matching.
RTF I/O.

The last version in the 2.x series is 2.1 (aka 2.1b1), released in August 2002.

Although a proper reference guide to WASTE 2.1 has never been written, most APIs and features are explained in the following documents:

Most of the APIs in WASTE 1.3 are unchanged and supported in version 2.1, so you can refer to the WASTE 1.3 documentation (see below).

Wrapper Classes and Add-Ons

There are a number of wrapper classes that allow you to use WASTE from within the most popular C++ frameworks for the Macintosh:

WText is a set of PowerPlant wrapper classes for both WASTE 1.3 and WASTE 2.0, originally written by Timothy Paustian, the author of the venerable CWASTEEdit, the original PowerPlant wrapper for WASTE (now no longer supported). WText is currently being maintained by David Phillip Oster and is hosted by Sourceforge.
Dan Crevier's WASTE TCL is a wrapper for the THINK Class Library.
The Debugger Group at Apple contributed a basic wrapper for the (now discontinued) MacApp framework. Later, MacApp gained complete support for WASTE 1.3, including an example of how WASTE can be used as a text editor that supports embedding graphics, URLs, etc.
UWEView is a WASTE counterpart of the TTEView TextEdit wrapper object for MacApp 2 (in pascal) by Roger Brown. It's not totally polished, but handles the basics.
Using WASTE 2.1 with PowerPlant and the WText wrapper for a Mac OS X application? Be sure to check out Richard Buckle's bridge classes which allow on-the-fly spell checking in WASTE documents using the system (Cocoa) spell-checker.

There are also several add-ons:

Richard Laws has written a Ruler CDEF for WASTE 2.0. The latest version is Carbon-compliant and comes with a modified version of the WASTE Demo that shows how to interface to the CDEF.
A set of embedded objects handlers put together by Michael F. Kamprath and John C. Daub.

Downloadable Files

The WASTE-related archives available from this site are:

WASTE 3.0.1 SDK (December 2006).
WASTE 2.1 Distribution (August 2002).
WASTE 2.0 Distribution.
WASTE 1.3 Distribution.
WASTE Wrapper Classes for MacApp.
WASTE 1.3 Documentation in PDF format. This is the ultimate WASTE 1.3 reference.
WASTE 1.3 Documentation in Microsoft Word 5.x format.
Hacking the Frozen WASTE for Cool Objects, a witty and instructive paper by Rainer Brockerhoff, which was presented at MacHack 99 and placed third. Please visit Rainer's own website!

More stuff is available from Dan Crevier's site.

The WASTE Mailing List

A new mailing list is available since September 2005 for discussing WASTE version 3.0.

The old mailing list created by Dan Crevier, and currently maintained by Jud Spencer using LetterRip, remains available for general WASTE-related questions, and for discussing older (pre-3.0) versions of WASTE. To subscribe, send a message to waste-on@lists.letterrip.com.

There are also archives of six years of past messages to this mailing list available from this site.

NOTE: These archives are kept behind a password to protect them from spambots (robots that harvest e-mail addresses for spammers). When you click on one of the links below, your browser will put up a dialog box asking for a user name and a password. The correct user name and password appear in the dialog box itself (look for "Realm").

Another WASTE site, hosting a bunch of interesting mailing lists. Yet another WASTE site, selling Radiohead-related merchandise. And another geeky product called WASTE. Can you tell what all of these have in common?

Legalese

What follows are the licensing terms for WASTE 2.1. WASTE 3.0 is licensed by Ovolab and subject to different licensing conditions.

You are free to develop, use and distribute to end users binaries built using the WASTE 2.1 static libraries, at no cost. Moreover, you are free to use and distribute to end users the WASTELib shared library, as included in the standard distribution, at no cost.
On the other hand, use of the source code in commercial applications requires a source code licensing fee of $100, which entitles you to incorporate the source code in your own software and modify it according to your own needs.
This license is non-exclusive and non-transferable and does not allow you to re-distribute the source code to third parties, either in its original form or in any modified form.
All WASTE-using applications must include the following credit line in their about box and/or documentation:
WASTE Text Engine © 1993-2002 Marco Piovanelli
I have the right to request and obtain one fully registered complimentary copy of the finished application.
Use of source code in freeware applications is free. Shareware with a single user license costing up to $10 is considered freeware with respect to this license, whereas shareware costing more than $10 is treated as commercial software.

Source code licensing fees for WASTE 2.x are collected by Kagi. You can pay using the Register application bundled in the WASTE distribution or you can register online using your credit card.