Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What writing electronically should/could be like

Author:Jacob Levy
Posted:9/4/1999; 10:38:35 PM
Topic:Microsoft, Intel losing ground?
Msg #:10594 (In response to 10591)
Prev/Next:10593 / 10595

What matters is what the braincells are programmed to do.

I have to agree, sadly. That's why I added the "could" in the title. Yes, unfortunately we've burned too many braincells in the current abominations people call office suites (yuck!).

But think a little deeper. What if you didn't have to save. All of your stuff is automatically saved, with the ability to go back (and forward!) in the version stream. Of course this is not really a stream but a tree, so the software would let you go down several branches at once.

Next, once a version is saved it is *automatically* published by the software so that whoever requests the document gets the latest version. Because the document is a tree, some people might want to see one branch, others another branch. This "just works".

So, indeed there *is* a save function and a publish function, you just never have to click on them. That's what I meant. If you absolutely need the file menu in such software just to feel at home, just wire Ctrl-S to a do-nothing function and you'll feel comfortable :)

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