Re: Consideration of "saving" files

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 04:06:41PM -0700, Adam Elman wrote:
> BTW, for those of you who are thinking along these lines, I highly 
> recommend picking up a copy of Jef Raskin's book "The Humane 
> Interface."  I'm about 3/4 of the way through it at the moment.  He 
> has some very interesting ideas on what a "non-file-centric" 
> interface might be like.

Yes.  I think he is a little to tied to the cannon Cat, and to the idea
of typing commands into documents (plan 9 has some of that too, though).

I have for a long time now wanted (and talked about, sometimes) a document
model in which save was unnecessary, and instead one could make named
checkpoints, or could continuously undo indefinitely, past sessions.

Computer files are an implementation of a storage mechanism for information.

Not all files are "documents" in any useful sense, and many documents
use multile files (#include <resumee.h>).

I don't think there is an easy answer, but "meeting expecations of
most existing users" is what kept the IBM xedit editor using the same
"DELET" syntax that the punched-card system had used :-)

Lee


-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
Author, Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley August 2000
Co-author: The XML Specification Guide, Wiley 1999; Mastering XML, Sybex 2001