Chapter 27 - If it takes you more than one touch to cancel to the end of a sentence, you're working too hard.

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 inspiration, but the actual editing operations themselves should happen as close as possible to the speed of thought. After all, they're only "tasks".

"Give me a for instance."

"For instance let's chop down the opening sentence of 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Let's cut it to the end after "worst of times" on an iPhone. We'll do it three different ways. The first two on the very popular iAWriter which along with finger-painting offers its "tapper-selector" method... (all highlighting all the time - 100% under the Microsoft Whammy). And then we go to Notebooks 10 which offers connective editing. One Touch!

Remember: highlighting to delete is connection by garbage disposal.

Which is DUMB!!!

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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...

Chapter 15 - It gets real. Juula, an Estonian girl visits Del at the ICU - Text Editing will soon take a quantum leap forward

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...

Chapter 17 - Whoa! Del trips the life support apparatuses for the wrong reasons. Not near death, but certain life!

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete This is when life support apparatuses should ALSO be clamoring, thought Del. Not only when he was about to die, but also when he was about to live! La Vita è Bella! "How did you get in?" "After we met, you never let me out, remember? So, I'm not here," she said indicating the whole ICU, "I'm here." She touched the side of her head. "That's terrible. One wrong impulse and I could turn you into a carrot juicer!" "I know, but you won't, because I have a job for you. And it's right up your alley, and since you like me so much, I'm going to be your muse. And you and I are gonna be too busy having fun!" "Whoa!" And just as Del had ruminated, all the warning bells went off and it was a concert of ringing, singing, wailing and bling-blinging. And one of the apparatuses - Infusion Pump N° 17 regulating Medication Line N° 23 - even started playing the bagpipes. To hell wit...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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