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 life, he knew with 'tragic' certainty that he was unworthy, that he would only bring her harm. He was like a muddy galosh in a clean room.

He should've followed up on that sentiment and cleaned up his act, but he felt ashamed in her presence and after catching himself leering at her like the dirty old man on the cover of Jethro Tull's Aqualung album, he nosedived.

And from recreational use, the drugs turned serious. Yes, that's when the silly giggles turned to cold sneers. Juula, that paragon of beauty and desirability had unwittingly slung him into a state of 'what's-the-use' - also known as 'the waiting room to hell.'

Whoa! Wait, wait, wait a minute here! Just a frigging minute!! What did Juula have to do with anything? Why was she back in his life? Had his prayer backfired? Was he on some sort of guilt trip? Guilt for what? He hadn't touched her! In the end, Del could only sweeten his countenance with a wan smile and helplessly murmur "whatever..."

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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 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 28 - A 1-touch text editor for phones and tablets. Exercise 1) - zapping words

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 revol...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

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