Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-ncis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ncar!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!pardo
From: pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor (Why any metaphor?)
Message-ID: <6860@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 89 04:58:20 GMT
References: <850@mtfmi.att.com> <673@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <1489@umbc3.UMD.EDU> <22616@pbhya.PacBell.COM> <66401@ti-csl.CSNET> <4510@xenna.Encore.COM> <4455@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <8092@aw.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: pardo@uw-june.UUCP (David Keppel)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 25

>In article <4455@Portia.Stanford.EDU> rdsesq@Jessica.stanford.edu 
>(Rob Snevely) writes:
>>why cant we have a word processor that has two interfaces. A "user-friendly"
>>pull down menu -- dialog based interface for new users. and a command
>>oriented interface for advanced users. This would allow those users who

Xerox worked on -- and never brought to market -- a text/graphics
intermediate representation that was designed to be edited on a wide
variety of displays.  On bitmap displays, you do WYSIWYG.  On glass
ttys, you do something like roff/tex or (if you're really lucky)
something like Wordstar.  On intermediate displays (fancy ttys), you
do WYSI~WYG (What you see is about what you get).  Graphics would be
done using block characters, and finer editing would require you drop
in to pic/grn sort of editing.

Of course, if you are working on a highres bitmap, you can always edit
it in any lower-resolution form to do ``expert'' manipulation.

I know that's not what Rob Snevely was talking about, but getting
several views on the same picture can be useful in several respects.

	;-D on  ( Clever me, I learned how to forget )  Pardo
-- 
		    pardo@cs.washington.edu
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