🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <11563@lanl.gov>, mikeg%watson (M.P.Gerlek) writes:
>Query: Are things like DIRED (directory editing w/in your editor) 
>          really necessary, esp. in today's windowed world?  Fancy 
>	  and nice to have, but a bit heavy unless you're stuck on a 
>	  VTxxx.  (As someone posted, "I want an editor, not an 
>	  environment.")  I like bells and whistles too, but at some
>	  point we lose track of the idea that we are _editing_ and
>	  have shells to do our dirty work in.

I claim that things are moving (and should move) in just the opposite
direction; a first-class work environment includes a ubiquitous
editor.  Existing (though deficient) examples include the Apollo pad
editor, the Macintosh editor(s) and, in a different way, Unipress
Emacs and the forthcoming GNU Emacs V19.  Emerging examples may be
best exemplified by text edit widgets or classes in such packages as
Xt, Interviews, and Andrew.

The guiding principle behind all of this is that there is a single,
common editor which is available in all situations.  This editor
either is the user interface itself, or is a very major part of the
user interface.  The basic functions of the editor are the same
everywhere (both function and method of invocation), but additional
and extended functions appear in different contexts as needed.

Note that none of this is either an unqualified endorsement of the
example editors listed above (many of which are terribly inadequate in
thier existing, minimal forms) or an attempt to insist that the common
editor must be implemented as one monolithic piece of code.

I also believe that it is very important for the editor to be
user-customizable and extensible, but claim that this is an orthagonal
issue. 
-- 
                                            dan

In real life: Dan Pierson, Encore Computer Corporation, Research
UUCP: {talcott,linus,necis,decvax}!encore!pierson
Internet: pierson@encore.com