Aucbvax.4922
fa.editor-p
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!editor-people
Mon Nov 2 19:35:56 1981
structured TEXT editing
>From Admin.JQJ@SU-SCORE Mon Nov 2 19:25:47 1981
I recommend to your attention a recent article (1), which argues for a radical
change in text editor design. The author argues that, instead of imitating the
composition processes used with pencil and paper, the text editor be designed
to facilitate structured planning. He proposes editors in which one could
describe and manipulate outlines of a work as an arbitrary network of goals
(generalizing a simple tree of sections), in which multiple versions which
differ only in organization could be conveniently maintained to "try out"
various plans, and in which one could assert predicates about the work as a
whole or about any subsection (e.g. require that the length not exceed 2000
words, or that no nontrivial word be used in the same paragraph more than 3
times, or that all citations refer to existing bibliography entries).
The author notes that he has partially implemented his ideas in PIE, a
"personal information environment" with which he has been involved at Xerox
PARC (2).
Personally, it seems to me that the system he imagines is little more than an
editor plus document compiler which allows one to see either the manuscript
(say, using Scribe, the .MSS file), or an outline (an analog of the Scribe
OTL), or a finished output. The key point of his version of multiple
representations is that the representations be integrated so that changes in
one version are reflected in all versions, and that the consistency checking
that Scribe does on compilation be available interactively via demons as the
paper is typed.
We discussed structure-oriented program editing extensively on this mailing
list a few months ago. Anyone interested in further examining such structure-
oriented editing applied to editing text?
REFERENCES
[1] Goldstein, I. Writing with a Computer. In Proceedings of the Third Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pages 145-147. The Cognitive
Science Society, Berkeley, CA, August 19-21, 1981.
[2] Goldstein, I. & Bobrow, D. A Layered approach to software design. In
Sandewall, E., Shrobe, H., & Barstow, D. (editors), Interactive programming
environments. McGraw Hill, New York, 1981.
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