I am writing software currently that makes use of the Syntax Editor in a fashion more similar to a word-processor than a coder's editor. What would help would be the following, several of which I know would be pretty trivial.

An instant word count facility. I currently generate this on a low priority thread running every 5 seconds but wonder whether the internal data structure used for the text might mean there is a more efficient way of tracking this. In particular, the act of applying syntax layout to the text presumably involves a scan of the text anyway so perhaps it could be done during that pass.

A solid block cursor as an option for insert mode as well as overwrite. I have used the measurestring method on the editor control's graphics surface to derive the width of the underscore character and set that as the caretwidth but it seems to not want to go beyond a certain width, presumably to maintain it's visual distinction from the overwrite caret.

A markerlinebackcolor property so that a line with a particular marker type would have it's background color set, in a similar fashion to the caret line background color.

Most importantly, the facility to either specify a blank line be shown (as a visual gap, but not stored) after each hard return, or better still to specify an actual visual gap size after each hard return. This would have the effect of allowing paragraphs of text (long text lines wrapped over multiple screen lines) to be visually seperated from each other and would be a great help with generic editing facilities beyond that employed purely by a text editor.

Of the four, the first and last would be most helpful. Though I suspect the last is a very great deal more involved the first three.