C70:editor-people (07/12/82)
>From LAWS@SRI-AI Mon Jul 12 00:12:28 1982
I used XED for a short time, and was not particularly happy with
its use of invisible formatting commands. (I suspect that the problem
was in my lack of adaptation to the system.) I think such an editor
requires more than a 22-line ASCII display.
If the display can't give me "what you see is what you get", or if
the document is to be formatted differently on different output
devices, I occasionally want to be able to see and edit the formatting
commands along with the text. This implies that
* The formatting commands should be in ASCII, at least during
the editing process.
* The commands should be symbolic macros (as in SCRIBE) rather
than low-level phototypesetter commands (as in TROFF). The
macro expansion can then be made device-dependent.
* The commands should be in-line rather than breaking text so
that the command flag character is on column 1. In-line
commands (e.g., @italics(foobar)) are much easier to read
and to imagine in the formatted form.
* The formatting commands must themselves form a coherent system.
In short, the editor should be fully integrated with a symbolic
formatting system such as SCRIBE or TEX. There should be a simple
mapping between commands entered with a keystroke or lightpen and
those entered as ASCII text.
-- Ken Laws
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