* <<G32.1274>> Copying some stuff out of the Protodocuplextron
** <<IJIEKEBX>> (2016-01-17T10:31:15.597Z) Visual Parallelism
The visual metaphor provided by traditional text editors and word
processors is that of the page – you are provided a page onto which
you can write, erase, and arrange text in a single column, not too
much differently than you might have done with a pencil and paper two
hundred years ago. But what if that's not how you work? What if the
way you work is to write in multiple columns, or on note cards spread
atop a table? And what facilities are provided for viewing references
while writing? None?
Writing is, more often than not, carried out simultaneously with
reading. *Any real writing system needs also to be a real reading
system* ([[IJIFELZH][Reading and Writing]]). Furthermore, it needs to
be a *multi-document* reading environment, with *parallel viewing* of
texts, not just a stack of tabbed windows. People have been forced
into various modes of serialism on computers for decades and decades,
and the advent of smartphones and tablets with small displays has
only made matters worse.
It's time to get serious about parallelism, visual juxtaposition, and
simultaneity. The "desktop" metaphor is a joke when you don't have
side-by-side, multi-document viewing and editing. But a desktop isn't
enough – we need a work space, a virtual environment
** <<IJIFELZH>> Reading and Writing
The best writing environment will be a great /reading/ environment
first.
I don't know that any writing software has been approached from that
direction before. There are a lot of word processors with a ton of
overhead that make poor document readers, and there are document
readers that either have no editing facilities at all or only the
most meagre annotation facilities. It seems insane to me that these
two activities should be treated so differently.
--
Excerpted from:
PUBLIC NOTES (G)
http://alph.laemeur.com/txt/PUBNOTES-G
©2016 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <
[email protected]>
