From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: 2-D vs 1-D, horizontal scrolling Article-I.D.: ucb.1316 Posted: Thu Jun 10 02:07:35 1982 Received: Fri Jun 11 01:09:39 1982 >From CPR@MIT-XX Thu Jun 10 02:05:21 1982 All this flap only points out how backward-looking we are. I thought we were supposed to be discussing the way things "ought to be". I want an editor which lets me flip through pages of text as easily as papers on my desk, and that includes whipping them around in any dimension (have you ever seen the more sophisticated newspaper layout systems? Rather special-purpose, but they give you exactly this power.) While we're on the subject--though I hate to get into this, as it expands indefinitely without obvious bounds--I'd prefer to meander about a virtual world, where "editing" is nothing more than manipulating virtual objects via some tools. For example, why shouldn't I be able to lay out my working papers over a large, rocky terrain, grouping and labelling them with signs easily seen from "the air". That way, I can zoom up, take the large view of my territory (clearly demarcated by fences from the next fellow's (and off, over there, is the Valley of PARC (etc.))), zoom down on what I want to play with, follow tunnels to related work (something like Xanadu cross-references), etc. Tim Rentsch's notion of intelligent objects is fundamental to this "world view" (in both senses of world and view). Further, my tools should be intelligent enough to adapt themselves to what's being worked on. And, as in the "real world", some tools may not be appropriate for the job (just as I can use a screwdriver as a lousy chisel), but if that's what you have in hand, why not? I don't consider this view of the "editing", or "working", or "computing" as all that radical. It'll just take time to develop sufficient computing power to support it. (That's why I saw we'll have a reasonable workstation when we have the crunching power equivalent of 1000 Cray-1's.) /Chris -------