Chapter 26 - For scribes and writers, the biggest design fail came from the best designer of all time!

                     

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

"Hi Del, how are you feeling today?"

"Still kicking, Juula."

"Where were we?"

"You were talking about the 4 main reasons for bothering to select text, which on handhelds, is mostly done by dragging mini-handles - a real bummer."

"Right. For writers and scribes, it represents the biggest design fail of all times. Sadly foisted on humanity by the greatest design genius of all times."

Minihandles! - Yecch!

"All right, let's focus on deletion. Remember this?"

Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox Christmas

"Yes."

In the preparatory "selection" phase, before effectuating the obvious deletion, it becomes this:"

Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox→Christmas

"What do you notice?! 

"For deletion, the only text I'm interested in is the one just beyond the end of the selected words!"

"You got it, Del. The highlighting can be construed as an indicator pointing to the ONLY thing the writer wants: the value immediately OUTSIDE the highlighting. You can stick an arrow at the end of it and write "Gimme this!"

"And all the text INSIDE the highlighting is garbage that needs to be removed IN ORDER TO CONNECT."

"Yes, Bill Dust-in-the-Sky Gates and the late lamented Steve Jobs, taught humanity to do a job that is insanely connective in nature by..."

"No! By garbage disposal!"

"That's right... and with the mini-handles they've got us LITERALLY caressing the garbage with our fingers!"

"Whoa!"

"And what did the geniuses who normally do stuff indistinguishable from magic do to solve the problem? How did they make the handhelds viable as work tools?

"External keyboards!"

"A huge copout!"

"Del, darling, we're not only gonna make editing on handhelds better, we're gonna make it better than regular computers."

"Te quiero mucho, Juula!" 

"Tambien, my bundle of crushed bones!"