Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!m2c!wpi!jhallen
From: jhallen@wpi.wpi.edu (Joseph H Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: why do editors "shrink-wrap" the text?
Message-ID: <1706@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 5 Apr 89 11:15:31 GMT
References: <1686@wpi.wpi.edu> <97499@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: jhallen@wpi.wpi.edu (Joseph H Allen)
Distribution: na
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. USA
Lines: 60

In article <97499@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> landauer@sun.com (Doug Landauer) writes:
>In article <1686@wpi.wpi.edu>, jhallen@wpi.wpi.edu (Joseph H Allen) wrote:
>>    And, most importantly and with religeous intensity, when moving
>>    between lines, the cursor MUST NOT EVER change column position.
>>    If the cursor gets placed after the end of a line or if it gets
>>    placed in the middle of a tab field, then, on the next command
>>    which requires the cursor to be in a valid position, the cursor
>>    should jump to the beginning of the next line, end of current line
>>    or beginning or end of the tab field, depending on the command.
> 
>WHY should the cursor jump at all??!?!?  Why is there such a ridiculous
>notion as "valid position"???   If the cursor is out beyond the end of
>a line and you start typing, then dammit the editor should insert
>enough spaces to allow you to type there!  If it's "in a tab field",
>then the tab should convert to the appropriate amount of spaces!

>-- P.S.  does gnuemacs have a mode where it works that way?

gnuemacs has "picture-mode" or something similarly named.  It does the same
thing that the turbo editors (which is what you're describing) do.

The only problem I have with this is that I like using the Cursor Right key to
move to the beginning of the next line and (unique to my cursor motion method
(on my own very non-portable editor)) the Cursor Left key to move to the
end of the line when the cursor is in the "invalid-position" after the end of
a line.  I have to occasionally use the Turbo-C editor which has the cursor
motion the way you like.  I personally can't stand having to hit the "End" key
so often.

Wordstar method:  move to the end of the line or beginning of tab stop when
                  cursor moves to an "invalid" position [yuk!!]

Turbo method:     change tabs into spaces and extend lines when cursor moves to
                  "invalid" positions [nice for drawing text pictures]

My method:        see above.  Actually, I got this idea from the Radio Shack
		  "Scriptset" editor- only Scriptset gave an error message
		  which required a reply if you tried to type in the "invalid"
		  positions.
- - - - - -

How does everyone like the idea of formatting paragraphs in this manner:

  When you type in a paragraph, lines which continue get a SPACE character
appended to them.  The last line of a paragraph and non-paragaph lines may not
contain spaces after them (I.E. this indicates "hard CRs").  This way, a
"global reformat paragraph" command can work and WYSIWYG-like editing which
automatically reformats paragraphs can be done on normal text files.

  Also, what is everyone's preferred methode for storing format information in
normal text files?  What I'd like to do is use "dot-commands" for things like
margen settings and ANSI escape sequences for attributes- but then, I don't
like seeing the "dot-commands" and not everyone has ANSI terminals.

  Another possibility is to have an auxilliary file along with each text file
to store the format information.

  The idea is to make a word processor suitable for most college-level paper
and "news" message writting which keeps the file formatted as "normal" ascii
text.