Re: Consideration of "saving" files

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 8:13 PM -0400 8/4/01, Liam Quin wrote:
> 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,

Well, he's clearly proud of the design. :)

>  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.

Yep, I agree that this is a great idea.  I think CVS might even be a 
reasonable/practical way of implementing this in the near term, as 
Seth mentioned.

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

Oh, I don't know about that.  You could handle cases where you're 
dealing with multiple shared "files" with Ted Nelson's idea of 
"transclusion" -- you select a piece of text/code or a full 
"document" and then basically hyper-link that selection into your own 
document in a way where you can easily access the original, and 
changes to the original are effective anywhere the text is 
"transcluded".  It doesn't have to be done at the file level.

Most of the examples of "files" I can think of which are not 
"documents" -- binaries, shared libraries, etc. -- could be managed 
by means completely separate from the document management interface; 
after all, why should an end user (one who is not a developer, 
anyway) ever care about "libgnome.so"?

That said, I don't think that I agree entirely with all of Raskin's 
ideas either, but I definitely think it's worth reconsidering the 
file-centricity of our current thinking if folks want to think about 
the long term.

> 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 :-)

It also keeps the Mac interface allowing you to eject a CD by 
dragging it to the trash can. :)

Adam
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