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 get you back? That all the keyboards, big and small, real and virtual will one day be lining up for you again?!"

"Whoa!"

"Not the same exact version of you, but a Delete 2.0 - a SuperDel, a one button WonderDel. And that's why we have to pay a visit to Microsoft's most famous cash cow: MS Word. Do you trust me?"

"Yes!!!"

"By the way, did you know that Bill Gates is planning to send lots of dust into the atmosphere to save the world from Global Warming?"

"Yes, I remember reading about it somewhere. Sounds crazy!"

"It is. And criminal too, but the point is that this megalomaniac is the same man - who more than anyone else - taught the world how to write on electronic devices. So by proving him wrong, not only will we improve text editing for humanity, but we'll also be saving the planet from a madman... not to mention getting your job back."

"Whoa!"

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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 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...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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