From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: From: Charles Forsyth Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:11:10 +0100 To: 9fans@9fans.net In-Reply-To: <7359f0490907142136s406a63c1jf71f4275101287@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] Why does Acme only show text? Topicbox-Message-UUID: 21490f6c-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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.