Aucb.368
fa.editor-p
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Wed Feb  3 14:09:57 1982
DED -- another structure editor
>From Admin.JQJ@SU-SCORE Wed Feb  3 14:01:07 1982
Some time ago this mailing list was the scene of an active discussion of
structure-oriented editing.  One editor that we did not discuss at the time was
DED, a display-oriented version of the Interlisp editor developed by David
Barstow (Barstow, 1981).  That editor apparently features a 2-window mode of
operation in which one window echoes the typical EDITF dialog while the other
displays an up to date prettyprinted version of the current expression or its
immediately enclosed expression.  Among the features that interest me are

  - Use of highlighting to delimit the current expression.
  - Abstraction of levels of detail (subexpressions below a specified
    level are displayed as "&"), with automatic zooming.
  - Use of arrow keys as a pointing device for changing the current
    expression.

Has anyone had experience with actually using this editor?  I would be
particularly interested in comments comparing it with ITS EMACS/LEDIT, with the
ordinary Interlisp editor, with the EMACS/Interlisp editing package, and with
the Cornell PL/I program synthesizer.  To what extent could such an approach be
plausibly integrated with an existing text editor (especially a Lisp-based
editor) such as EMACS?

Since we have already discussed the general issues of structure editing in this
forum, perhaps it would now be useful to discuss issues of practical technology
and user interface.

                                 REFERENCES

Barstow, D.R. Overview of a display-oriented editor for Interlisp. In IJCAI-81.
     Vancouver, B.C.: International Joint Conference on Artificial
    Intelligence, 1981.
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