The DnD Sanctuary

General => Browsers & Technology => Topic started by: ersi on 2015-02-16, 11:22:29

Title: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2015-02-16, 11:22:29
Here's a list of text editors http://www.tuxarena.com/2011/06/20-text-editors-for-linux-overview-screenshots/

The most professional and advanced thing is of course an office suite for word processing, but my foremost concern here is plain text in e.g. emails and webforms (textareas) and, by extension, coding and programming. My code-editing needs are minimal (naturally on a par with the abilities) and I have usually not much use for e.g. the self-completion kind of bracket-and-tag-matching. However, I often search and replace massively in texts, often in multiple files at the same time, which makes me perhaps intermediate so that I cannot stick exclusively to the simplest editors such as Notepad.




What's the best interface?

It's probably useful to distinguish between GUI and terminal programs. While menus and statusbars are common in both graphical desktop environment and easily possible in terminal (or console), GUI programs can rely more on toolbars with buttons and mouse interaction. Terminal programs can have some mouse interaction, but it's of a whole different quality. Mouse support has no standard in terminal programs, so it's not uniform. Terminal programs rely more on keybinds.

Mouse interaction and buttoned toolbars make GUI interface stand out. Apple and Google interface engineers (and others infected by them, such as Gnome and MS devs recently) think toolbars plus a viewing/editing area is all a user should ever want. They tend to provide menus as another button on the toolbar and they deliberately hide or kill the menubar.

So, in addition to mouse interaction (point&click, scroll, drag&drop) and buttoned toolbars, which are more GUI things, not for terminal programs, some other elements in editor interface are:






What's the functionality you cannot live without?



Given your combined needs of editing, what's your choice of editors? What kind of editors have you been looking at and what did you find?

As for myself, I often tend to use the simplest editors for quick file-changes in GUI, such as Leafpad and Mousepad which are basically equivalent to Notepad. For more concentrated use I open up Medit for its sessions (to continue where I left off), for its file-tree, highlighting, theming, and macros. Sometimes I miss tag-and-bracket matching which is not there in Medit, but not too badly.

In terminal, the necessary theming is done by configuring the terminal rather than the program in it. I tend to use the terminal a lot because all programs in it display uniformly in the fonts and colours I set. My preferred editor in terminal is nano which is much simpler than vi or emacs. Linux distros tend to include nano out of the box, even though vi tends to be the system default, so I have to configure vi away every time and make nano the system default.

Same as the likes of Notepad, nano is a very good option for quick file-changes, but I have ended up writing long text in it (such as this forum post). I have configured it to display highlighting and learned its shortcuts to find, copy, cut, replace, undo and redo stuff and to move around in files. Among other features nano provides automatic justification of text (due to the justification feature, it serves well as email composer for mutt), navigate the file system, some mouse support and management of buffers.

On the list linked above, joe with its multiple frames/windows looks interesting. This is something that nano doesn't do.




Web interface, forms and textareas

Webpages have holes where to type stuff. These are called forms and textareas. Sometimes, such as in these forums, they provide some formatting options, smileys and such. These are things I don't care about. I often browse the web with images off. I don't care in what way the textareas are styled. When I don't use them, I want them small, but when I use them, I want them big, i.e. I want them to be configurable. This means either user CSS or an external editor as a plugin or extension to the browser.

A good example of inbuilt configurability in webpage textares is at Github. It offers a modest textarea for comments along with a full-screen button, i.e. the textarea can fill the browser frame, the font turns big and it's much comfier to type. The Github design would be in my opinion the best kind of design for textareas all around the web, but still the problem is that it's not adequate for everyone and everything. The same way as browsers provide a way to configure an external source viewer, downloader, emailer, etc. it would be obvious to provide a way to configure an external textarea editor too.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: jax on 2015-02-16, 12:32:05
There are at least three modes of writing, "creative" writing and/or outlining, typing, editing. Each with their own needs. I'd like to have available what I need in each mode, with a minimum of distractions from what I need.

In normal/work use you don't write in isolation, you add to what others have written, and edit for the purpose of publication.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: DarkFireZero on 2015-03-02, 05:10:00
I would say maybe just import the data, then get the users to come back and make a fresh account.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2015-03-02, 09:16:32
Why didn't I think of that? :doh:
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2015-08-05, 14:36:42
LibreOffice 5 is out for those who like such things. It's my favorite insofar as I don't dislike the entire concept.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0

On topic, when it's just for me I generally prefer to work in Markdown (http://fransdejonge.com/2013/11/pandoc-markdown-over-straight-latex/), with some LaTeX mixed in when necessary.

My browser post composing, when not done in the browser itself, I do in Zim. This has more to do with its note-keeping and organizing capabilities than with its capabilities as a writing platform per se. Paper and Zim are where my ideas incubate and where I keep my lists of things of interest; where I write down my research results before I buy things, etc.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2015-08-06, 11:47:52
Writing software, as Microsoft's Word or any other, destroys reasoning.
People should be forced to write with ink and paper and not allowed to make corrections. That's the only way of having things orderly structured inside your mind.
Anyone that can write an A4 page by hand knows it.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Barulheira on 2015-08-06, 13:38:28
And then, copy by hand and send by mail. No fax allowed. Too much technology. :left:
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2015-08-09, 09:18:03

On topic, when it's just for me I generally prefer to work in Markdown (http://fransdejonge.com/2013/11/pandoc-markdown-over-straight-latex/), with some LaTeX mixed in when necessary.

My browser post composing, when not done in the browser itself, I do in Zim.

And you don't use Latex editors? I noticed some time ago that Gummi's default startup interface is awesome: The code and rendition side by side in dual frames.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2015-08-09, 10:34:34
And you don't use Latex editors?

For the moment my preferred text editor is Geany, with SciTE for those circumstances where for some reason or other it's a bit slow. Specialized editors are rarely any more responsive.

Gummi did look quite nice when I tried it a few years ago, but like I said I don't much care to compose directly in LaTeX if I can avoid it. Markdown is much more legible, easier to write, and even with some fairly significant \latexblabla control codes still transforms nicely into e.g. HTML and DOCX.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2015-08-10, 09:36:47

And you don't use Latex editors?

For the moment my preferred text editor is Geany, with SciTE for those circumstances where for some reason or other it's a bit slow. Specialized editors are rarely any more responsive.

I see. So from your point of view the editor must be "responsive". This must be so for fast typists.

For me, the editor must be legible, first and foremost. Geany may be responsive in that it puts letters in place as fast as I can type, but a dark theme that I once upon a time got to work in Geany looks a bit glitchy, and looks matter a lot to me when it comes to text. So I prefer things like Mousepad or Medit that come with Cobalt and Oblivion themes inbuilt. It's a bit stupid that themes matter to me this way, but it's my stupidity and nobody can take it away from me.


Gummi did look quite nice when I tried it a few years ago, but like I said I don't much care to compose directly in LaTeX if I can avoid it. Markdown is much more legible, easier to write, and even with some fairly significant \latexblabla control codes still transforms nicely into e.g. HTML and DOCX.

In Gummi I like the default dual-pane overview of both the source and the rendering. It's a totally fabulantastic thing.

The markdown format seems awkwardly limiting to me. It's both too easy and too complicated at the same time. It's easy to understand the basic idea, e.g. you can emphasise words and create lists with asterisks, but when you *really* intend to type an asterisk, it's the end of the world.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2015-08-10, 12:27:06
For me, the editor must be legible, first and foremost.

I'd just as lief type my initial draft with the screen off. :) But sure, legibility is important. I've never had any issues.

So I prefer things like Mousepad or Medit that come with Cobalt and Oblivion themes inbuilt. It's a bit stupid that themes matter to me this way, but it's my stupidity and nobody can take it away from me.

There's nothing wrong with Mousepad. That's why I like plain text: any editor goes. But one thing that becomes quite important in longer documents is having an overview of the structure (F5 in LibreOffice). To my knowledge Mousepad doesn't have that.
The markdown format seems awkwardly limiting to me. It's both too easy and too complicated at the same time. It's easy to understand the basic idea, e.g. you can emphasise words and create lists with asterisks, but when you *really* intend to type an asterisk, it's the end of the world.

Escaping characters works with a backslash, same as in LaTeX, regular expressions, and pretty much anything I can think of. But *emphasis* is just a poor man's italic, just as underlining is a typewriter's (also poor man's) italic. This scenario should be exceedingly rare, and I've certainly never encountered it.

It's true that Markdown is somewhat limited, but the only true problem is an ongoing lack of a built-in means of referring to images and tables. (NB That depends on the MD implementation; at least one does have it and there's an extension for Pandoc that does the trick as well.)

In any case, to me Markdown is a reasonable approximation of how I already typed in plain text. And plain text is preferred for obvious reasons. It may not be perfect, but at least for me it's pretty darn close to it.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2015-08-10, 15:36:36

I'd just as lief type my initial draft with the screen off. :) But sure, legibility is important. I've never had any issues.

When you can type so well that you don't need the screen, of course you should not have any issues. As for me, I have always taken care (and spent possibly months of my lifetime) to set the fonts and colours right - and that's why I don't have any (serious) issues with the eyes either.


But one thing that becomes quite important in longer documents is having an overview of the structure (F5 in LibreOffice). To my knowledge Mousepad doesn't have that.

You mean like headings, paragraphs, pages, tables, etc. neatly listed? Plain text documents are not even supposed to need this in the first place, because there's no formatting and no embedding by the very definition. 

However, a replacement offered by some plain text editors is marking or bookmarking. When you type a line that is supposed to be a heading or something else important, mark the place and later you can jump between lines that are marked this way.

For overview, I would like to see a reading mode in big word processors, as in Libreoffice. By reading mode I mean a distinct mode of displaying the document, separate from the editing mode, so that when you scroll it here and there to get an overview, typing would not alter anything. And preferably it should be possible to set different fonts and colours for reading mode, so that you know for sure it's reading mode right now.

(Recently, Firefox has implemented a kind of reading mode. Safari had it earlier but, knowing Apple, it was surely copied from somewhere earlier still. Of course, Opera's userCSS was perfectly suitable to put the whole internet into reading mode and that's what I used it for.)


But *emphasis* is just a poor man's italic, just as underlining is a typewriter's (also poor man's) italic.

In books published in the Soviet Union somehow the most preferred typographical emphasis was s p a c i n g. I guess that was poor Soviet Block's italic.


It's true that Markdown is somewhat limited, but the only true problem is an ongoing lack of a built-in means of referring to images and tables. (NB That depends on the MD implementation; at least one does have it and there's an extension for Pandoc that does the trick as well.)

The worst thing with Markdown is lack of standard or lack of definition. The original statement is open to various interpretations and now it indeed is very varied. In Github you learn one thing, in other places you have to accommodate to variations, whereas I would really prefer to have the plain good old plain text available. I shouldn't need to escape plain text!
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2015-08-10, 18:20:45
You mean like headings, paragraphs, pages, tables, etc. neatly listed? Plain text documents are not even supposed to need this in the first place, because there's no formatting and no embedding by the very definition.

An editor like Geany lists headings in Markdown and LaTeX; specialized LaTeX editors list the headings in LaTeX files. "Embedding" could likewise be listed, although I have no need for that.

The worst thing with Markdown is lack of standard or lack of definition.

There is a certain lack of standardization, but not in a way that is problematic.

In Github you learn one thing, in other places you have to accommodate to variations, whereas I would really prefer to have the plain good old plain text available. I shouldn't need to escape plain text!
You're talking about something very different (i.e. not for your own use on your own computer). It's a control issue more than anything. Like how we're sometimes forced to use Word. Yuck! :P
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-01-30, 15:04:45
Using PyRoom (http://pyroom.org/) right now.
"Distraction free" text editor, I like the concept.

Quote
PyRoom is a free editor that stays out your way - and keeps other things out of your way, too. As a fullscreen editor without buttons, widgets, formatting options, menus and with only the minimum of required dialog windows, it doesn't have any distractions and lets you focus on writing and only writing. It is distributed under the GNU General Public Licence v3.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2016-01-30, 17:28:08
Oh yeah, I tried that for a bit. It's pretty cool. :)
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-15, 10:17:46

Using PyRoom (http://pyroom.org/) right now.
"Distraction free" text editor, I like the concept.

Does it have any specific advantages over vi? (Even though I use nano instead.)
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-03-19, 12:18:04
Does it have any specific advantages over vi? (Even though I use nano instead.)

Sorry, I don't know vi.
I'm currently using Pluma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluma_(editor)) (which comes with Ubuntu Mate) and I'm satisfied with it to write in English. Can't see how I can add other languages to the spell check plugin, I suppose I can't but to the six "versions" of English... which it's funny from a distro that comes with the name Mate - a Brasilian plant known for it's tea.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-20, 06:27:19

Does it have any specific advantages over vi? (Even though I use nano instead.)

Sorry, I don't know vi.

Type man vi in terminal. vi and a plain text filename in terminal should show you the interface.

Basically, I meant by my question how PyRoom compares with terminal-based editors, because if you want minimalism, you'd go to the terminal.
 

I'm currently using Pluma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluma_(editor)) (which comes with Ubuntu Mate) and I'm satisfied with it to write in English. Can't see how I can add other languages to the spell check plugin, I suppose I can't but to the six "versions" of English... which it's funny from a distro that comes with the name Mate - a Brasilian plant known for it's tea.

I am also having constant trouble with spellcheckers. I seriously wonder why the makers of spellcheckers don't think beyond the system default language. I have to be able to spellcheck any arbitrary language and switch them on the fly, obviously!
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-03-20, 13:10:28
Basically, I meant by my question how PyRoom compares with terminal-based editors, because if you want minimalism, you'd go to the terminal.

Well, I like minimalism but always with style... :)

The terminal is not something that I enjoy too much using and I restrict it's usage to a few sudo this sudo that...

The question to me remains at using a full text editor like libre office's Writer when I need to use advanced and powerful editing tools or something lighter that makes me feel comfortable to focus on the creative writing process itself.
Title: Mate
Post by: Barulheira on 2016-03-21, 12:10:49

a distro that comes with the name Mate - a Brasilian plant known for it's tea.

South American, to be fair. Mainly from Paraguay (https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ilex_paraguariensis).
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-22, 13:49:48
The question to me remains at using a full text editor like libre office's Writer when I need to use advanced and powerful editing tools or something lighter that makes me feel comfortable to focus on the creative writing process itself.

I'm trying out Scrivener, which is basically a novel/screen writing application. At first glance, it's the opposite of minimalism. It includes templates for character development as well as for settings and I suppose you can make your own and modify the existing ones. The application also has folders for "front matter", which the book cover, dedications and you can make your own additional front matter such as the legal information (copy write, credits, etc) and compiles the finish product into epub, mobi, etc. There's also a minimalist "compose" mode in which you're presented with only white typing space and a black background for distraction-free working, good for focusing on the creative process. All this is available from the main screen. The downside is that not everything is innovative to use and testing all those features detracts from work time.

The "best" depends on what you need, obviously. For my work, having a simple as possible interface doesn't cut it and I actually need features. The simple editors have their own problems. For instance, I don't want to have multiple windows open with text documents with all the characters' traits, the plot, what each setting is supposed to look, smell, sound, etc like. A dedicated creative writing tool like this can help resolve that issue.

No, I don't work for them and I'm not getting paid for this :p Like I said, I'm only trying it out myself.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2016-03-22, 13:55:57
Speaking of software like Scrivener, I've heard some good things about bibisco (http://www.bibisco.com/en). Never tried it myself.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-22, 15:25:42
I've never heard of it, but it also looks like it might be useful to him since he needs something for creative writing. A disturbing amount of the creative process for long works is is keeping the work consistent. For example, in my writer's group we catch people changing the exact spelling a character's name in the course of the book. I've even caught myself doing that with some characters name "Praetextus" (a Roman name.) Even worse is keeping track of when events happened in a 300 page book after a dozen re-writes that even involve changing the order in which events happen or adding scenes then having to think "Did event X really happen yet to give the character knowledge of it or maybe it did happen but was that particular character actually there or was otherwise told of it?" It would help a lot if whatever software he chooses can help keep track of issues like this (it looks like Bibisco can also do this, but I'll need to fire up my Linux box to test it.) You also want some sort grammar checker. The built in ones suck, but can help find simple typos and cut some time off the proofreading (not real editing) process.

It's romantic to imagine opening up a plain text editor and just writing a whole story stream of consciousness, but that notion is far from reality. If a writer says he does that, I can think of three possibilities: 1) He's lying 2) His IQ is higher than that of Steven Hawking 3) His stories are riddled with every imaginable, and then some, errors.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-22, 17:03:43

It's romantic to imagine opening up a plain text editor and just writing a whole story stream of consciousness, but that notion is far from reality. If a writer says he does that, I can think of three possibilities: 1) He's lying 2) His IQ is higher than that of Steven Hawking 3) His stories are riddled with every imaginable, and then some, errors.

4) He is supermethodical (no need for massive IQ, just discipline) 5) He is writing under inspiration, not under impulse to show off or under compulsion to meet a deadline or contract.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-23, 04:07:49
None of the tools Scrivener or Bibisco offer is a contradiction to inspiration. Go nuts, write out the character profiles in far more detail than you'll need in the story. Write settings out multiple times, again with far more detail than you really need, and base the finished product on the best one or a combination of them. Have fun :yes:

In fact, the tools can inspire by helping you imagine details that you might not have thought of otherwise - details that separate your work from the pack.  A example of this is mannerisms. Abigail, one of the characters in my latest novella that I'm still working one, scratches at her in response to uncomfortable questions.

I'll try to show you what I mean. This is from the same the same short book, which I consider to be still rough draft quality.

Quote
Abbie pursed her lips. “Nobody told me anything like that before. I'm trying not to fuck this up. I mean mess it up...”
I pressed my finger to her lips. “You don't have to change your vocabulary or anything else about yourself for me.”
“I do. I'm evil.” She scratched at her left arm.
I took Abbie’s self-harming hand and held it gently with a measure of firmness. “Stop it. Why would say that about yourself?”


Even that's not as intense as it could be. A new writer without tools will typically produce something like this:

Quote
“Nobody told me anything like that before. I'm trying not to fuck this up. I mean mess it up...”
“You don't have to change your vocabulary or anything else about yourself for me.”
“I do. I'm evil.”
“Stop it. Why would say that about yourself?”


See this difference without tools and editing for character development? This version doesn't show the extent that the first character feels badly so about herself and uncomfortable that she digs at her own arm and the second character instinctively protects her, etc.

The plain text editor is great for cranking out your rough draft in one night under inspiration. To take the story to the next level and beyond, you'll want something better. It is possible to drive in a screw in with a hammer, but for best results choose the correct tool.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-26, 15:02:21
Heh, your second example can only come from a writer who never read an actual novel first :)

Anyway, if you write for profession, you might need a proper monitor for it too.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2r7k0M_UIw[/video]
(Note that this reviewer finds no glitches with the monitor. Other reviewers find a bunch.)
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2016-03-26, 15:31:49
Heh, your second example can only come from a writer who never read an actual novel first  :)

I have to agree I'm not sure what special writing tools have to do with anything in that example. I thought they were mostly about ordering the scenes, keeping your facts straight, and such. Adding the sample improvements seems more like a matter of multiple passes (i.e. editing) and/or experience.

Anyway, if you write for profession, you might need a proper monitor for it too.

That sounds fantastic, although as far as sharpness goes my netbook screen (1024x600@~13") is outdated to say the least. And if you're going to spend up to $500 on a monitor, I'd almost certainly recommend a UHD@~24" monitor like mine instead. As much as backlight annoys, the increased sharpness in all likelihood does more to improve the experience.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-26, 15:38:22
Speaking about efficient writing in quantitative terms, here's an interesting article http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/james-patterson-is-going-to-produce-4-new-books-a-month

I wonder what kind of tools they use. Do you live close enough to Patterson to ask him, Raccoon?
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-03-26, 23:11:18
The biggest writers in history never needed any "tools" but pen and paper.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-27, 05:40:27

The biggest writers in history never needed any "tools" but pen and paper.

Despite him allegedly regularly producing NYT top books, I don't remember having heard the name of James Patterson before. And I certainly haven't read him. And never will. I only have geeky technical interest.

Steady output requires discipline and organisation. The greatest Finnish writer for example was also the most productive. His discipline was to write ten pages a day. Ten pages filled, he would stop half a sentence and continue next day where he had left off. His ideas (and received orders, yes there were those) were of course organised too.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2016-03-27, 09:06:21

The biggest writers in history never needed any "tools" but pen and paper.

Who's talking about needing? :)

I don't remember having heard the name of James Patterson before.

I have, but I've never read any of his books (and probably never will).
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-03-27, 12:11:45
Steady output requires discipline and organisation. The greatest Finnish writer for example was also the most productive. His discipline was to write ten pages a day. Ten pages filled, he would stop half a sentence and continue next day where he had left off. His ideas (and received orders, yes there were those) were of course organised too.

I don't believe that Art can be generated from such a method. I heard many great authors to refer to writing as a painful and chaotic process, not an organized and clean writing assembly line.
Who's talking about needing?  :)

Course it's needed. Most writers these days simply apply stereotyped formulas book after book. Readers accepts everything the moment they saw it at some top ten sales chart.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2016-03-27, 17:39:12

I don't believe that Art can be generated from such a method.

Neither do I. No method guarantees production of Art. It's just that method guarantees production. What gets produced depends on the user of the method.


I heard many great authors to refer to writing as a painful and chaotic process, not an organized and clean writing assembly line.

For poets, very likely. To produce an epic novel you have to be more organised than that.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-29, 05:15:30
Neither do I. No method guarantees production of Art. It's just that method guarantees production. What gets produced depends on the user of the method.

Exactly. None of this automatically means assembly line art. If the user chooses to do that, it would be every easy to reuse plots while changing details and crank out a completed book quickly and sell the ebook on Amazon for ninety-nine cents. However, you can use this method to lovingly craft a literary novel and spends weeks contemplating rich and unique characters, settings, etc.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Belfrager on 2016-03-29, 22:47:34
The user chooses nothing but his own mediocrity. That's what Writing 2.0 is done for, to explore the wanna be writers.
The more computer help it's expanded the less real people will be writers, perfection for the domination of weak souls.

Literature to be dominated by the empty low-medium classes colaborationists... with a little help from my computer...

All the great writers I admire never saw a computer.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-30, 11:07:59
That seems to be good resource, and I'm listening to this (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/project-manage-your-book-wendy/id924980625?i=356211847&mt=2) episode now. It seems to agree with me so far, though. It discusses milestones and project plans and what will make you focused and motivated. I personally use milestones to work.
Literature to be dominated by the empty low-medium classes colaborationists... with a little help from my computer...

But when as it not been? We remember the greats, but mediocrity has  dominated the market since the time of Greek plays.

More the difficulty comes in editing. You get to know your own work so well that errors become easy to overlook. That's related to the phenomenon that the human will often see a completed circle when if a chunk has been taken out. In other words, the human eye and mind "edit" content so it seems correct even if it isn't.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: midnight raccoon on 2016-03-30, 11:19:36
I'd just like to point out that if we disagree on these points, it doesn't mean one person is right and the other is wrong. It's just what works best for each person and what he's trying to do :)
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2018-06-05, 05:39:59
Finally I have understood that Geany is actually the best editor for my purposes. There were two important reasons why I did not understand it earlier:

1. Ugly icon
2. Lots of tinkering needed to get rid of its interface distractions

The first reason is important in that, when I start serious work, there should preferably be some serious-looking icon to click on to get into work mood. Geany's icon is not that.

Out of the box, Geany has some ugly line running vertically across its editing space. I guess the line is important when you are typing an email in there. Once I found that it's possible to get rid of it (took a few years), it turned out that Geany is the closest thing to Notepad++ on Linux. And Notepad++ is of course the best thing ever.

Medit is not worse at all function-wise, but there was one disturbing thing: When you select a line in Medit (by a single click) and the line is wrapped over in the editor, the line gets highlighted only until the wrapping point. When you select a line in Geany and the line is wrapped over, the entire line gets highlighted.

Medit's another problem is that it's slow to start up. Geany is fast.

Mousepad is even faster to start up, but I have not found a way to fix a more serious wrapped-line problem there. When you multi-click on a wrapped line, it selects only a wrapped part of the line, not the entire wrapped line.

Then there's one more function that I often need, but that tends to be a hit-and-miss in editors: Drag&drop. Particularly, I like to drag a URL from the editor and drop it in a browser to open it. Works in Medit and Mousepad with Mozillaites. Does not work in Geany. So even Geany is not perfect.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2018-06-17, 06:36:35
it turned out that Geany is the closest thing to Notepad++ on Linux. And Notepad++ is of course the best thing ever.
SciTE, Notepad++ and Geany all share the main editing component. There's much more software based on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintilla_(software)#Software_based_on_Scintilla

What exactly do you mean by ugly line? Over by the line numbering? The line numbering itself?
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2018-06-17, 07:59:32
What exactly do you mean by ugly line? Over by the line numbering? The line numbering itself?
The ugly line vertically across the editing space, the right-hand half.

(https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2amU.png)

It seriously put me off of familiarising myself with Geany for years. Until I found that there's a buried tickbox to make it disappear https://superuser.com/questions/692666/how-to-get-rid-of-this-vertical-line-in-geany

The app icon is ugly too, but I can tolerate that.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2018-06-17, 09:00:37
Oh, the 80 (?) char line length indicator thingy. Yeah, I forgot that was on by default.

Geany's been my default text editor for several years now. Other than perhaps Sublime Text I'm not aware of anything I'd seriously consider switching to.

I can't stand some of those supposedly decent editors like Atom and Visual Studio Code. They're too slow and unresponsive.

Back in the early 2000s I also liked the demo of EditPlus. Since this was around the same time that I became enamored with SciTE I imagine I'd probably still like it. I think it still fits on a floppy disk, which speaks volumes in favor of it compared to bloated slow editors like Visual Studio Code.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2019-04-15, 18:46:21
Somehow I managed to upgrade my text editor usage somewhat so that I can now do stuff in vim almost as well as in nano.[1] The best tutorial is vimtutor.

Next I am ready to try Emacs evil mode (i.e. vim keybindset in Emacs). Wait, Emacs can browse the web? And by such an obvious keybind as 'Alt+x eww'? This find is long overdue! Yet another webbrowser to play with...
Still writing this in nano though.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2019-04-15, 20:00:10
Vim isn't too hard, at least in the basics,[1] and you've got a lot of nice controls under colon.[2]

But mainly I just find it too much effort to remember what mode you're in and all that. My main purpose for it is in case there's nothing else available for some reason often there is Vi(m) and not Nano.
j, k and stuff like that
:q and :wq are the most important I'd say
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2019-04-15, 21:04:11
:q and :wq are the most important I'd say
The annoying thing is that :q simply throws up an error if you have (unintentionally) edited something but not saved it. Therefore :q! is more important.

I also have it difficult to remember the different modes. When the syntax highlighting is the same in different modes, it gets impossible to be aware of the modes. This is why I actually use vim just as a fun practice, not as a tool for serious writing and editing.

The purpose of the fun practice is to learn less better. That's the tool for viewing text files, searching in them, opening and navigating multiple buffers. I do not have syntax highlighting in less so I distinctly remember that I am in less, just viewing. But when I enter edit mode (by pressing v in less, which takes me to nano - must set the editor environment variable for this, otherwise it takes you to vi), the syntax highlighting turns on in nano and I can clearly see that now I am editing.

Not sure if there can be any educational purpose to Emacs. Well, browsing the web with it will be fun for a while.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2019-06-02, 02:10:23
It took a while, but I (think I) finally understood that all text editors are for coders, and coders are not writers, so text editors will never be quite suitable for writing. Even Emacs with all its modes and extensions is for coders only, and has some way to go to become a word processor useful for writers.

There are a few crucial differences between writing code and writing human-language text. For coders, the repetitive (and therefore ideally automated) tasks are code-snippets in the beginning or in the end or around words and paragraphs. Instead of spellcheck, coders can make a good use of autosuggest, because their word-base is limited and repetitive.

Writers of techy and journalistic texts need more fixing for whitespace than for actual words. Or perhaps for words and phrases a most welcome feature would be suggestions from a dictionary of synonyms, particularly for writers of novels. And instead of code-snippets, writers need some actual typesetting (formatting) features, but not too much, because typesetting is a distinct task and everybody should be aware of it.

Writers in multiple languages (applies to any complicated novel, and much more so to scientific articles) need a convenient spellcheck for multiple languages in one document (multi-spellcheck). Unfortunately text editors can spellcheck just one language, and they tend to assume that a single document is a single language. (At worst they even assume that the only spellcheck language you need is the computer's default language.) An ideal spellcheck in a word processor would allow the user to:
1. select a chunk of text in the document
2. tell what language the chunk is
3. spellcheck the chunk for that language

And of course make exclusions for names, acronyms, and special signs when writing a technical text or in a markup language.

Another nice feature for human writers would be multi-selection: Make a selection of regions of text in different places in the document and swap the regions. Not cut first in one place, move it to the other place, then cut from the other place and move it to the first place, but select here, select there, and swap - much more convenient. Not going to happen in this world, I guess.

Anyway, I eventually found an actual word processor for the terminal: Wordgrinder (http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/). For starters, just look at the options to move around in the document. By the way, all keybinds are reassignable on the fly, no restart of the program needed.

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1JBdXWN2xotbFHq9OtkWbkSWIlj0gyi1fInFRVrAN6svLHaR-OE-PpMcxr5uEg1Ws3eLgVosUzQG72yWJqaDJuxAPg0ZCT_p_InjmTcI0J4v_BMdKGRt84PYY1pFbQLeJGRxI64a02Y=w762-h547-no)
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2019-11-23, 19:13:27
Looks like org mode is so amazing that I may finally switch to Emacs. Its core is the distinction between a heading and paragraph. Or note title and content.

Then add lists, including checklists. Thus far markdown can do the same. But then add deadlines with calendar integration. Also add the ability of displaying it in Emacs with collapsing and expanding from the headings, tables that can do everything Excel can do, and advanced extensions to convert to HTML, Latex, PDF, and whatnot, and everybody should be convinced.

Org mode in Emacs can serve as notebook/organiser and authoring tool for code, article outlines, presentations, and more. Copycat versions for vim are trying to play catchup but are nowhere near. Here's a speech by its original author
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM[/video]
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2019-11-24, 12:14:38
I think I'm happy with my slightly simpler to use Zim, but it definitely looks interesting.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2019-11-25, 18:48:05
I cannot directly recommend it either. Emacs org mode requires Emacs and Emacs can drive one crazy when diving into it too fast. Even after years it becomes slowly comfortable only after you, after long familiarisation process, become convinced of the usefulness of at least three of its major aspects. For example, org mode, editor, and browser. Or org mode, editor, and mailer. Or mailer, browser, and editor. Or calendar, org mode, and editor. Can't do without the editor, unfortunately.

This is quite different from Vim, which is only frustrating as long as you do not know the keybinds and shortcuts. It frustrates, but doesn't drive one nuts (apart from the beginner's shock when you do not know how to quit/exit it, which can be quite traumatic) because it is just an editor with a visually clean interface. Even though I don't like Vim's quit keybind to this day, to me its view mode versus insert mode made instantly sense, and I soon set up Less and Nano to emulate these modes: I always open up readable files in Less, and when I need to edit, I press "v" in Less to go into editor, which I have set to Nano.

In comparison, Emacs is rocket science in every way. And its quit keybind is much worse than in Vim.
Title: Emacs Org Lightning Intro
Post by: ersi on 2020-03-28, 08:36:50
Install Emacs. Open it. Select File > Visit new file (or type C-x C-f) and create a file with .org extension. When a text file with .org extension is open in Emacs, Emacs is automatically in Org mode.

The basic rich formatting is as easy as markdown:
* Headline
** Second level headline
*bold* /italic/ _underline_ +strikethrough+ =verbatim= ~code~

Some export formats are inbuilt. Choose Org > Export/Publish (or type C-c C-e) and you see a popup that, among other thing, tells you that pressing "h" and "o" will output your org file as HTML and open it in the browser for preview. (I have written some of my latest blog posts this way.) Enjoy!
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2020-04-02, 18:05:01
What I still miss is an editor with a BBCode highlight, the kind of code written for forum posts like this one. BBCode should be childishly simple to highlight, but somehow I have not noticed anyone doing it.
Yup, because I did not know Emacs. There is BBCode-mode for Emacs (https://github.com/ejmr/bbcode-mode) and I already learned to recompile it so as to adapt it to this forum  :happy:

And conversion of Org to Doc is also easy enough with LibreOffice installed. The only thing to test and verify is LibreOffice Doc compatibility with MS Word.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2020-04-02, 18:50:20
There's also https://github.com/Ernir/Kate-bbcode

But Markdown highlighting seems to do the job reasonably well too?
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2020-04-02, 19:49:32
But Markdown highlighting seems to do the job reasonably well too?
Yes, for mere highlight, but not when you want keybinds to automate the tag-writing. BBCode-mode for Emacs does both, and when you modify it, it does both differently.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2021-05-08, 11:15:38
By now I am using Emacs more than Nano for writing. The advantages of Emacs are enormous, not the least being able to edit BBCode with bbcode-mode. Some other great productivity boosters are
 - Inbuilt movement commands not only for character, word, line and paragraph, but also for sentence[1] and whitespace!
 - Syntax highlight for everything, including for basic prose in inbuilt org-mode
 - Inbuilt electric-pair-mode to autocomplete quote pairs and parentheses
 - Dabbrev: Inbuilt completer of words based on the text that is already in the buffer
 - Abbrevs: Inbuilt customisable text expansion similar to MS Word's Autocorrect
 - Skeletons: Like Abbrevs, but more advanced, with an ability to put the point automatically anywhere in the middle of the expanded text or to stop for a manual completion at relevant points, e.g. autoexpand "There are", then stop to manually type e.g. "seven", then proceed to autoexpand "important things to keep in mind about this." all within one skeleton
 - Even handier word-level autocompletion is available with external extension company-mode
 - Originally Emacs has its own isolated copy-paste history called kill-ring, but this can be combined with the system clipboard with (setq select-enable-clipboard t)
 - Snappy startup by configuring an Emacs server as a daemon and thereafter launching emacsclient -c (or emacsclient -ct for terminal-only or even emacsclient --tty), which is far more appropriate when using Emacs as the environment for web forms, forum posts, etc.
 - Dired: Inbuilt file management, file search, opening, moving, deleting, etc.

By a lucky coincident I was even able to install Emacs on my work computer. It is possible only to install programs through the company-internal software app and, for a moment possibly by someone's mistake, Emacs showed up there. Now I have it and nobody else can have it :) I don't think I would be able to survive this job for long by having to type in MS Word.
Prose sentences are recognised out of the box, if there are two spaces between sentences. It appears that many writers in the English-speaking world are taught to type this way. To be able to recognise sentences by period followed by a single space, use (setq sentence-end-double-space nil).
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2021-05-08, 11:36:37
It appears that many writers in the English-speaking world are taught to type this way.
I think that's probably outdated, but it is indeed something the English speaking world liked to do on typewriters with monospace fonts.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2021-05-08, 12:10:00
On a monospace typewriter it would be a noticeable eyesore :) I have been noticing this for some ten years or more in blog posts in Blogspot, Wordpress etc. and only figured it out recently.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2022-01-09, 11:07:14
This guy uses Emacs to write screenplays.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be1hE_pQL4w[/video]

Fountain is a markup format for screenplays. When you learn all about it, you can try go Hollywood https://fountain.io/

Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2022-01-09, 17:12:57
Are screenplays required to look like they were composed on a typewriter?
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2022-01-09, 19:33:43
Are screenplays required to look like they were composed on a typewriter?
Ever since printers became a thing (as in printing out of a word processor on a computer), you can have variable font, but otherwise yes, the conventions are as they are. If you type in MS Word or such, you'd have to do the drama-esque indentation and allcapping. In Fountain format you can omit the indentation, from what I read in the specification, but Fountain will apply the indentation upon export.

Edit: Nah, I was wrong. We are talking Hollywood, and apparently it has to be exactly as if on typewriter:
Quote from: https://screenwriting.io/what-is-standard-screenplay-format/
Here are the basics:

- 12-point Courier font
This makes sense too, as this font with wide line spacing is better readable from distance. But in theatres (as in non-movie) over here Times New Roman is commonplace, or whatever MS Word puts on out of the box these days.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2022-01-10, 09:35:51
This makes sense too, as this font with wide line spacing is better readable from distance.
Perhaps it would yield a more dependable script length to minutes of film conversion compared to a variable width font. Although I don't find that hypothesis particularly plausible.

Speaking of typewriters, here are some new pictures:
http://xahlee.info/kbd/hermes_ambassador_b1-c.html
http://xahlee.info/kbd/smith_corona_vtx_100.html
http://xahlee.info/kbd/aeg_olympia_cpd_3212a.html
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2022-01-10, 09:50:17
There may be some rough estimation of the length of the movie based on the length of the script (even though more likely the producers determine the limits: up to this length and no more). What I know is that the actors have the script in hand (or there is a loudreader-person with the script in hand) when they practise, so the pages need to be
- legible and
- leave wide margins for possible notes and remarks.

Particularly (non-movie) theatre actors practise a lot and carefully until they master the entire script properly. In contrast, movie actors practise on a scene basis, the production process may include helluvalotta rewrites and the actors need to keep up with the changes.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2022-12-03, 15:43:49
This guy is a bigger hater than Xah Lee. He hates Emacs so much that he made his own distro, called Commercial Emacs (https://github.com/commercial-emacs/commercial-emacs).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflDJ9L4siw

And yes, Emacs' slowdown on long lines is a serious obstacle when editing webpage files and should have been fixed last century. It sometimes gets in the way in basic prose too.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2022-12-03, 16:52:50
That was quite amusing.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2022-12-03, 20:30:59
From another video of his it appears that he is brother of Tech Lead (as a millionaire) who is probably familiar to you. Dick Mao[1] is a far more creative insulter and intensely angry at life, but it's nice that he is less scummy and less scammy than Tech Lead. And rewriting Emacs is a life choice I definitely understand.

A while ago I read some book that talked about how there used to be a type of computers called Lisp machines that by now have ceased to exist. Such a terrible loss, but apparently RMS noticed early enough where the wind was blowing and made his GNU project a Unix-like, which turned out to be the correct choice. Still, it would be nice to have a machine that only runs Lisp and whose only job is to launch Emacs.

I have thought about the controversy that Emacs does not adhere to "Unix philosophy" that programs should be small, do just one thing and do it well. Instead of a philosophy, it seems to be a limitation of C language. C is binary-compiled. When you launch a the binary, it loads everything into memory, but since memory was precious in old times, C programmes could not afford to be big. So the so-called philosophy is due to the nature of C language. Whatever Unix-like there is in the GNU project, it is done as per Unix conventions and limitations of C. Emacs does not have to obey the limitations of C.
Now that's an amusing username, or maybe real name.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2022-12-03, 22:49:16
From another video of his it appears that he is brother of Tech Lead (as a millionaire) who is probably familiar to you.
Somewhat. Insofar as I am I definitely don't want to watch him.

I have thought about the controversy that Emacs does not adhere to "Unix philosophy" that programs should be small, do just one thing and do it well.
Since you mentioned Xah. ;)
http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/_fastfood_dir/fastfood.html
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2023-09-01, 22:13:16
Bram Moolenaar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Moolenaar) has died. He was the lead developer of Vim, the improved version of 'vi' text editor. My guess is that Vim will become legacy and Neovim will outgrow it. However, Vim was here first and served as inspiration for its forks, of which Neovim will probably become most successful. Vim is history in a good way.

I learned Vim long before Emacs. Vim and 'vi' are easier to get into than Emacs. They are just not easy to get out of. But at one point I managed to grow out of Vim and wanted more.

I found that the editor that does the Vim concept best is Kakoune. One reason is the interface paradigm: Kakoune is based on selections, which is my kind of thing. As somebody put it, "Kakoune is Vim's visual mode done right." Another reason is Kakoune's command input language. In Vim it is "do thing". In Kakoune it is "thing do". Thus in Kakoune you first select an entity like the word or line or such, and then decide whether you want to cut it or copy or overwrite it, but in Vim you need to first decide if you want to cut or copy or overwrite, and only then you can select what it is what you want to cut, copy or overwrite. Kakoune's way is more to my liking.

Then I still wanted more. According to Vim concept, the keybinds spell out the operative language of the editor. The idea is that you learn the keybinds and you will know how to operate the editor. But additionally, there is also the configuration language, which is a different beast. In Emacs, Lisp is both the operative and the configuration language whereas keybinds are essentially an arbitrary extension and could in principle be entirely rewritten (and they have in some Emacs distros like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs). So in Emacs in my opinion it works the right way: If you really want to operate, then learn the operative language and you will be able to operate more fully and deeper than mere keybinds ever could. However, there has been some good thought put into grouping Emacs' many keybinds, so that the default keybinds are still worth learning in my opinion. But it is even more worth knowing that everything can be done by M-x and far more can be done by M-: and all commands and functions can be combined and compounded in Lisp. The only thing I don't like in Emacs is that residually there are some external GNU commands being triggered like grep and diff. Absolutely everything should be Lisp.

Bram Moolenaar's Vim has been a wonderful stepping stone on my journey through editors. Vim was my first geeky advanced editor.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2023-09-02, 07:17:16
In Emacs, Lisp is both the operative and the configuration language whereas keybinds are essentially an arbitrary extension and could in principle be entirely rewritten (and they have in some Emacs distros like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs).
Vim has Vimscript, but that's why Neovim has Lua instead.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2023-09-02, 11:07:32
Vim has Vimscript, but that's why Neovim has Lua instead.
Lua is a choice that provides more opportunities than Vimscript, but it is still an API to the programme you are configuring. In contrast, Lisp is the heart, soul and flesh of Emacs.

These are fundamental questions that I have had to ponder on my quest for the best interface to writing and typing. What is primary and ultimate among the following?
- Keybinds
- Operative language (= the commands or functions triggered by the keybinds)
- Configuration language (= the syntax of the config files)

(Of course there are more fundamentals than listed. For example, I definitely want a window to edit in, instead of having to deal with a line-spitter like 'ed'.)

My preferred text editor in Linux for a very long time, even after learning Vim, was Nano: Sensible keybinds, enough functions, and some ability to change the keybinds. In old Opera, the keybinds triggered commands defined in INI, which was easy to learn and rewrite.

The Vim concept (or more properly the 'vi' concept) at first enforces the doctrine that keybinds and the operative language are the same. The keybinds that you learn and use are the commands triggered. The keys h, j, k and l etc. trigger commands h, j, k and l etc. which makes up the operative language. This is in fact inherited from 'ed' along with a separate mode for text insertion − you need to switch to a different mode in the editor to type text instead of issuing editor commands. And also the configuration language is by necessity different from the operative language. While it can be helpful for beginners at first to consider keybinds and the operative language as the same thing, things get complicated as you configure settings.

Neovim plugs in a proper programming language, so that the operative language and the configuration language become the same, and you can start thinking of keybinds as something separate and independently changeable, which is the way things are in Nano, in old Opera and frankly pretty much universally. There apparently is an Emacs-like set of keybinds for Neovim (https://github.com/sei40kr/nvimacs), but once you think of keybinds as separable and changeable, then no particular set of keybinds is revolutionary anymore. Rather, it begins to matter how deep the language can go into the programme. Can you extend the programme to do almost anything and rewrite almost everything?

Once upon a time I tried to understand programming but lost hope early on. Programming was a deep mystery to me and all my attempts to self-learn it failed. I could not find any reasonable beginner's resources. I was stumped already by the name. They are called programming languages, so I thought of them as languages. If they are languages, then I should be able to type the language in correct syntax and the computer should understand it, right? Wrong. Only Emacs made me understand what programming languages are. They are software. Like any other software, you need to install it, then open it up and learn to use it. So, to make a programming language do stuff for you, you need to install and open up the programming language app. Software programmes are made of functions and settings interfaced as keybinds, menus, form options etc. that you select and apply to make the software programme do stuff. In a programming language app, the programming language itself is the set of functions and settings and you apply it by typing it in correct syntax in the editor-like thingie. The typing serves as input for an interpreter or compiler and only then the output from the interpreter or compiler is able to do stuff.

So in my quest for the perfect interface for writing and typing the latest revolutionary event has been the realisation that it is possible to reach the goal by becoming a programmer, take what programmers use for programming, and then programme it further. GNU and Linux have both been written in Emacs, so evidently it is the text editor of choice for those who write opsyses worth of software.[1] My aim is word processing rather than coding. The difference is that in coding you create and debug functional entities, whereas in word processing you create and navigate prose. The main common point between the two activities is navigation. In a complete or near-complete work, another common point is search&replace. Search&replace is the entry point to text processing, which in turn is the entry point to programming, and Emacs connects it all. After the beginner stage in Emacs one can learn to build more sophisticated functions for navigation and search&replace, which teaches Lisp, which in turn opens the door to extend and rewrite pretty much everything in Emacs, at which point one is a Lisp programmer.
Incidentally, I do not think that "Do one thing well" is really a Unix philosophy. Rather, it is an imposition of C language. When you build a big complicated C programme, it requires too many resources (due to the monolithic nature of compiled C) and is hard to debug. So "Do one thing well" is an imposition of C and of lack of resources. Whereas the sprawling nature of Emacs is enabled by Lisp, which is a language to be changed on the fly, it does not need recompiling, and when you launch the Lisp behemoth, you only load the parts you need, instead of all of it like in any C programme. Emacs was used to write the Unix clone GNU/Linux, so it is perfectly sensible to think of Emacs as in full harmony with Unix philosophy, whatever the philosophy is.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: Frenzie on 2023-09-02, 11:18:54
Incidentally, I do not think that "Do one thing well" is really a Unix philosophy. Rather, it is an imposition of C language.

There is this essay of unknown provenance dating back to at least the '80s:
Quote
Last night I dreamed that the Real World had adopted the “Unix Philosophy.”

I went to a fast-food place for lunch. When I arrived, I found that the menu had been taken down, and all the employees were standing in a line behind the counter waiting for my orders. Each of them was smaller than I remembered, there were more of them than I'd ever seen before, and they had very strange names on their nametags.

I tried to give my order to the first employee, but he just said something about a “syntax error.” I tried another employee with no more luck. He just said “Eh?” no matter what I told him. I had similar experiences with several other employees. (One employee named “ed” didn't even say “Eh?,” he just looked at me quizzically.) Disgusted, I sought out the manager (at least it said “man” on his nametag) and asked him for help. He told me that he didn't know anything about “help,” and to try somebody else with a strange name for more information.

The fellow with the strange name didn't know anything about “help” either, but when I told him I just wanted to order he directed me to a girl named “oe,” who handled order entry. (He also told me about several other employees I couldn't care less about, but at least I got the information I needed.)

I went to “oe” and when I got to the front of the queue she just smiled at me. I smiled back. She just smiled some more. Eventually I realized that I shouldn't expect a prompt. I asked for a hamburger. She didn't respond, but since she didn't say “Eh?” I knew I'd done something right. We smiled at each other a little while longer, then I told her I was finished with my order. She directed me to the cashier, where I paid and received my order.

The hamburger was fine, but it was completely bare… not even a bun. I went back to “oe” to complain, but she just said “Eh?” a lot. I went to the manager and asked him about “oe.” The manager explained to me that “oe” had thousands of options, but if I wanted any of them I'd have to know in advance what they were and exactly how to ask for them.

He also told me about “vi,” who would write down my order and let me correct it before it was done, and how to hand the written order to “oe.” “vi” had a nasty habit of not writing down my corrections unless I told her that I was about to make a correction, but it was still easier than dealing directly with “oe.”

By this time I was really hungry, but I didn't have enough money to order again, so I figured out how to redirect somebody else's order to my plate. Security was pretty lax at that place. As I was walking out the door, I was snagged by a giant Net. I screamed and woke up.
Title: Re: What's the best kind of interface for writing and typing?
Post by: ersi on 2024-02-07, 17:39:23
Dick Mao managed to graft multi-threading into Emacs. This is quite an achievement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne6ZpeEop_4