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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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