Chapter 23 - Deletion is connective in its blind mechanics

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

"Her name is Pilù and along with bananas she's fond of fruits, leaves, roots, and sometimes - especially in the mating season - other primates. So be careful!"

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"Pilù, Pilù, I love you! Don't eat me, I love you!"

For reasons unknown, Pilù fell instantly and madly in love with Del. The French call it a 'coup de foudre,' a bolt of lightning, but this was worse: Cupid had fired a bazooka. Monkey love is very strong!

"Yes... I love you too, Pilù! Je t'aime mon petit chou-chou. Juula, now that I have found my kindred spirit, I can’t see myself bothering with keyboards anymore and so..."

"No, Del, please! Don't go turning me into something crazy! Wait! First let's FOCUS on what we have to do! Here, give Pilù this tablet."

She passed the chimp an iPad Mini with a text editor open on Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"Yes, sorry, you're right."

Unprompted, Pilù was already eagerly reaching for the device.

"Okay... Here, let's see what you write, my chou-chou, my cabbage-cabbage!"

"No, Del, what we're interested in is seeing what she CANCELS. Remember?"

Del, Delete? Editing?

"Ah yes, of course!"

"Okay, here's the famous soliloquy: 'to be, or not to be'...

Order Pilù to make a deletion."

"Ehm... I'll try... first a little practice, okay?"

He turned to Pilù and instructed: "Darling, sugar-pops, watch... You drag a finger and you spread the selection glow over the words, and then you hit BackSpace."

Pilù quickly got the hang of it - primates will be primates! - and after a couple of UNDOS she was ready for the real test.

"Oh, you're so very very smart and I love you too! Ready? On my three: One, two... wait!" Pilù streaked a finger from the word 'not' of 'or NOT to be' all the way to 'rub' - excluded - of 'ay, there's the RUB' and then diligently tapped BACKSPACE - immediately expecting and receiving an exaggerated show of affection from Del.

"Such a smart one! Not even an Australian Shepherd can come close!"

Before the love talk could degenerate, Juula intervened and with a twitch of the nose, like Samantha of the ancient 'Bewitched' series, made Pilù disappear from Del's loving arms.

"Hey!

"Focus Del! Focus! Pilù's deletion is proof of something fundamental. Can you guess?"

"That in monkey language 'to be or rub' makes sense?"

"Not even close! All right watch... I'll tap in 'undo' and Pilù's selection will return."

"It says 82 words in all."

"That's beside the point."

"Hint, please!"

"Concentrate. Think of something so obvious that it's almost too stupid to notice."

"Oh uh... well..."

And that's when Del saw Connective Editing in all its absurdly obvious splendor!

"Deletion is connective in its blind mechanics!"

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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!...

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' - smartph...

Chapter 18 - Juula promises to get a "new and improved" DEL back on phones and tablets

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete "Good morning, Del! Ready for the big day?" "Sure, what do you have in mind?" "A tour... to a place you've often seen but never noticed." "I like it already. Where?" "A page in MS Word." "Eh? Microsoft Word? I must've done two-thirds of all my work there - even starting before Windows. If there's one place that holds no mysteries for me!" "So you might think, my sweet bundle of mashed-up bones, so you might think!" "Okay, I believe you, number one because I have to and number two because I want to. But may I ask why?" "Yes, of course. You feel that you were unjustly removed from the telephones and tablets of the world, correct?" "Well, I can't say 'unjustly' - there wasn't any room for two deletion buttons, so they left the big guy - they left Backspace... but all right, yes, it hurts." "What if I told you I could...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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