Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!samsung!xylogics!bu.edu!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!boomer
From: boomer@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Rich Akerboom)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Word Processing under Mac vs Unix (was Nisus)
Message-ID: <23030@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 3 Jul 90 22:36:18 GMT
References: <3918@dogie.macc.wisc.edu> <5309@stpstn.UUCP> <8964@goofy.Apple.COM> <2684@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
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In <2684@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov (Grobbins (IDM)) writes:

>In article <8964@goofy.Apple.COM> teener@apple.com (Michael Teener) writes:
>>By the way, someone really needs to come up with a better model than even 
>>the Unix-ish regular expression.  I have a hell of a time explaining this 
>>stuff to someone who has successfully avoiding ex/vi/grep arcana.

[stuff deleted]

>For those of you who haven't used Nisus, replacing all occurences of
>one or more spaces with tabs would involve choosing three item from
>menus.  They then appear in the dialog as

>  Find:         || Space || << 1 or more occurences ||
>  Replace With: || Tab ||

>If anyone has a seen a better solution (no untried ideas, please; prototype 
>it up before posting) I'd love to hear about it.

I believe the last time I saw Nisus at a Mac show, they had adopted an idea
that I'm sure many others had suggested (including myself) to replace the
double vertical bars separating the 'Space' and '<< 1 or more occurances'
above with a box around the whole 'meta character'. Instead of a confusing
series of characters, some of which are '|'s, one sees a series of boxes
with things written in them-much clearer. As drawn below:

------- -------------------------
|Space| |<< 1 or more occurances|
------- -------------------------

only on the mac this would show up as a good box. I suggested shadowed rounded
rects, so as not to look like a pop-up (although that could be another idea)
but to give the appearance of blocks.

-- 
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Rich Akerboom        Internet, etc.:   boomer@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
Sylvan Software      UUCP:             decvax!dartvax!eleazar!boomer
P. O. Box 566        Telephone:        (802) 649-2238
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Rich Akerboom        Internet, etc.:   boomer@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
Sylvan Software      UUCP:             decvax!dartvax!eleazar!boomer
P. O. Box 566        Telephone:        (802) 649-2238