From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:56:07 +0000 From: pavlovetsky@gmail.com Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <78917c48cf5f83c2288c0a1745c38339@quanstro.net> Subject: [9fans] Re: Building GCC Topicbox-Message-UUID: 37c712d6-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Jan 24, 9:24 pm, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: > > i realize there are holes around the edges. i don't see how to > > edit or select a layout, just the text within layouts. maybe > > select skips non-text bits. > > > what's so wrong about this idea? > > Nothing, you need to think out of the box. Current selection in > sam/acme is linear, even though it is shown as two-dimensional. Text > is treated as linear (might explain why HTML tabels are treated with > contempt) even though it has some two-dimensional properties, at least > on the screen or on paper. > > For layouts (I'm pretty ignorant here, please excuse any blunder I may > utter), you need at least as many dimensions as occur in the > representation, one is not a practical option, two would be normal, > more will no doubt be possible in the future. My gut feel is that > once one breaks away from the linear interpretation of text, a lot of > things will fall into place. > > One thought is that vertical font sizes are an additional dimension, > while images are merely single characters with unusual height and > width. The horizontal character size is in the first dimension, of > course. > > As for mark-ups, they require their own treatment, probably along the > lines of living in a separate layer as would be the case in image > editing. Using layers seems to me like a good concept to edit > enhanced text. Perhaps horizontal and vertical dimensions also belong > in layers distinct from the abstract text. > > Just a naive idea... > > ++L Treating image as character (with unusual width and height) means indefinite number of potential characters and if a machine (not human) does not able to differentiate between "text characters" and "image characters" it renders character sets unusable.