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!"

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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' - 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...

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THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Del came back to his senses chastising himself. Lucidity, lucidity at all costs! Machines don't beg doctors to kill patients! Lucidity, damn it!!! How is lucidity obtained when in a coma? he wondered. And as always, because of his experience, the answer came instantaneously: prayer. He mumbled a Rosary. And in the middle of a Glory Be, out of the blue but with poignant clarity, he remembered a moment well after he had been banished from the keyboards, but shortly before the 'additives' - the damned drugs - had lost their magic. He had met a marvelous Estonian girl, marvelous because she was so pure and clean and straight and unsullied by drugs or cynicism or attitudes. Juula was fresh and had honest twinkles in her eyes. Del had been entranced. But after all the bad living he'd been through (with the worst yet to come) for all he was bedazzled, he had refrained from courting her because for the first time in his l...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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