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Chapter 1 - From Keyboard Reject to Action Hero


THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

Once upon a half-life ago, there was a guy called Del. That was his nickname, short for Delete. And he was a reliable, hard-working key on most of the world's computers.

A straight-forward and regular sort of guy, he was never more prominent than any of the letters he had been charged to kill, no fatter than an 'i', no skinnier than a capital 'W' - unlike Backspace who was super-sized and flaunted a Nike-style arrow pointing hard-left ←.


Some hardware companies, like Lord Macintosh, had refused Del right from the get-go, preferring to farm out his tasks to a combination of other workers like 'Function-Delete,' with 'Delete' on Sir Mac actually being Backspace ←.

But then one day, for Del - the original Del - things took a bad turn, real bad! And it happened at the speed of a toilet flush vortex! Millions upon BILLIONS of small handheld flatscreen devices suddenly began to spill from the heavens - the 'STPs' - smartphones, tablets and phablets. And in short order - 'sorry, but screen real estate is at a premium!' - 'sorry, no space' - Del was fired without severance - banished! And nobody, not a single one of his keyboard comrades, could find it in his heart to spare him a Zhengzhou hug or a Silicon Valley ciao.

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                        THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Guten morgen, Schatz! Danke, meine Liebe! What have you got for me today? Well, I wanted to show you how one single Connective Editing button obeying a simple instruction, has got all the other editing apps for handhelds beat - and as a matter of fact it's even snappier than what's normal on a regular sit-on-your butt computer. Wow... I'm all in. Actually, you ARE! Because this new single instruction will be the new DEL. And any app would be foolish to ignore the wonderful ease and power it offers. But then... But then... ? I want to be on a keyboard too! You do? Yes, I want to marry you and live on an extra keyboard row with you. Have you been smoking something, Juula? Absolutely not. I never do that stuff. Right, sorry... I didn't mean it that way. I want to join you and be a second button that completes the new DEL. Then if we have children, the DEL and JUULA family can revolutionize editing. I love it. I know it soun

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                       THE STORY OF DEL - Delete " Buongiorno Del! Come va ?" " Bene bellezza, mia . What do you have for me today?" "We're gonna reason a few things through regarding text editing on handhelds." "For instance? "Well, when discussing anything, it's always a good idea to provide some givens. For example:" 1) Compared to the ease of selection on regular computers, with their big physical keyboards, mice, shift-arrows and function keys, highlighting text on the flat screens (phones, tablets and phablets) is torture. "Definitely! But the problem is the handhelds are basically content-retrieval systems." "Maybe they are now, but they don't have to be. No, it's entirely a matter of poor design. Excuse the vulgarity, but piss-poor design!" "I have good reason to believe you, mi amor!" "The second given:" 2) When editing, the writing part can happen at the variable speeds of ins