C70:editor-people (06/12/82)
>From LAWS@SRI-AI Sat Jun 12 00:43:01 1982
In response to Chris Ryland:
The "dataland" system would indeed be nice, and apparently has been
shown feasible by the MIT Machine Architecture group and their
handoff to CCA. Once you "pick up" a page of text, however, you
still need a good editor to manipulate it. I would agree that an
editor for that environment should be page or document oriented.
On a different tack, here's a quote from "Perceptual Components of
Computer Displays", Ralph Haber and Leland Wilkinson, May '82
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications:
A flowchart interpreter should have several convenience features.
As in the execution time displays of the Harpy speech recognition
program, flow of control during execution ought to be highlighted
so that the programmer can follow it easily. Breakpoints should
be under light-pen control so that a programmer can catch a bug
"on the fly." In addition, the user should be able to control the
detail in the display. At the highest level, an entire program
could be displayed on screen as a set of procedures. The user
could then choose to zoom any area of the screen down to blocks,
subroutines, macros, or single instructions. Steps in this
direction have already been taken. Cross assemblers, compilers,
and programs that check syntax and flow of control already perform
many of the required tasks.
-- Ken Laws
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