From: R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET (Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator))
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: (Fwd: *C&CD*) Importance of computers to writing (4)
Date: 5 Nov 92 02:01:00 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"

Entry: 4
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1992 04:48:00 EST
From: IN%"RobertRoyar@Delphi.com" Robert Royar (C&CD Moderator)
Message-id: <1992Nov04.044800.1.Grendel.Lair@Cratylus>
Subject: Importance of computers to writing (4)
Reply-to: IN%"R0MILL01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU"  C&CD
Organization: Cratylus Educational Software

>Date: 2 Nov 92 16:01:00 GMT
>From: "Joe Chew" <agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!csa3.lbl.gov!jtchew@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
>Message-id: <2NOV199208013834@csa3.lbl.gov>
>References: <1992Nov2.063042.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu>
>Subject: RE: (Fwd: *C&CD*) The purpose of computer writing (2) (*COMP.COMP*)
>Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA

>Having looked at a paper or three, I don't necessarily see a whole
>lot about the differences in writing between typewriter and computer
>that didn't come out in, say, Zinsser's _Writing with a Word
>Processor_ about a decade ago.

What may become interesting is the effect of the wp on writers who have
grown up with it. This is an area we aren't yet able to study, but can begin
to outline how.

I'd also like to see more interest in wp design. My experience has been that
it's difficult to get professional programmers or CS students interested in
such a mundane area of research when there are arguably so many more exciting
areas out there in software design.

I listen to many CS undergrad and grad lectures (my office being in the
same small building where most of the CS courses here are taught) and the
primary focus (the only focus) is on Trees, sort algorithms, Fribronacci,
factorials, fractals, and graphics. In four years of listening to these
courses (four different instructors and three different languages), I've
yet to hear one example dealing with visual rep of text on screen, layout
of editing commands, designing macro compilers, fast HLL techniques for
file saving and recovery, design of efficient text-based summary or
information files, etc. I know that the fundamentals of search, sort, and
graphics play roles in each of the tasks I mentioned, but the class needs
to make those connections more explicit (at some point), and the ones I've
heard don't.

I'd love to teach a course for CS majors (or even writing majors) in which
the goal was to convert a public-domain wp into a usable tool for a college
writing class. In it we would learn about the points I mentioned and
additionally such programming fundamentals as pointer indirection, linked
lists, dynamic memory allocation, mixed data types, object manipulation,
efficient memory management, OS interfacing, text/data/storage
(.text,.data,.bss) portability, user interface design, graphic object to
text conversion, screen addressing algorithms, documentation and help
systems, and on and on.

As someone noted a number of years ago programmers spend 80% or more of
their time inside their text editor, but few ever look beneath its surface
features.

This spring I saw a demo of the new 1-2-3 for the NeXT platform. It was like
a reinterpretation of the spreadsheet using color and object-based concepts
to allow the user to manipulate data in visual and meaningful ways. I found
it amazing as did the reviewer on the etv show who was talking with one of
its developers as he demoed some very complex report generating capabilities
that relied on assigning colors to types of information (say all first
quarter material) and then using the color "tags" to restructure the info on
screen--never losing the richness of the original spreadsheet. I'm not doing
the program justice here. But the ideas embodied in that program would be
very interesting to explore in text editors working with volumes of
material.

By the Way anyone know whether NeXTStep-486 is past the vaporware stage yet?

 -- Robert Royar (RobertRoyar@Delphi.com) New York Institute of Technology
    "I am not a crook."
                                                           - Richard Nixon


------------------------------
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU