Re: [9fans] Why does Acme only show text?

[Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net>]

Oberon takes advantage of a structured text representation
where both the interpretation and graphic representation
of particular elements is provided by Oberon modules.
One demonstration had a little animated cartoon character
that could be cut and pasted into another frame, where it
continued to move.

Acme exploits one chunk of identical text being the same as
any other, given particular meaning by the
button used to select it and its frame or tag context
(the context including a program sitting behind the frame).

It's probably relatively easy to give over Acme frames to a
program that draws, but is there a good way of providing
something more than that, giving more of the
`structural support' that Acme provides to text-oriented
applications? Is it time to consider a possible role for structured text
along Oberon lines?

One of the reasons for porting Acme to Inferno originally
was to try to explore those things in a slightly more
flexible environment, but it didn't happen, partly for lack of time.