textedit and large files

[Jeffrey Marans]

One of the users on the our network of SS1's [4.0.3] wants to ask why
textedit becomes extremely slow when he's editing ascii files greater than
1 meg.  He says the cpu meter shows little usage, but his internal disk
grinds away for quite a while.  Is it possible his 104 meg drive is
becoming fragmented, or is the unix defrag algorithm rearranging the file
structure?