Hi from Rome, Italy

[twerppoet]

Playing around with all my text editors, I found out something I didn’t know about Textilus Pro. It has a Select Sentence tool, and forward delete. It’s probably the most complex/powerful non-scripting editor I have, barring the full word processors of course.

The sentence tool selects whatever sentence the cursor is in; so no need to be precise.

Still not exactly what you are looking for, but an improvement.

The screenshot is from my 12.9” iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard attached. I’m not sure how the UI will look on an iPad Mini.

Select Sentence is under the gear icon. The arrow points at the forward delete.

 

[Futz]

Hi Twerppoet,

Thank you very much for your help. I have Editorial, but I have the programming talents of a slug. In fact the first time someone suggested that "A" could be equal to "A" plus 1, I wanted to call the cops. I'm sure for those in the know it's a snap.

Yes Textilius and Scrivo Pro and the other wonderful word processors / Text Editors of Studio 5Apps have sentence and paragraph selectors... (they are excellent programs, very stable and feature rich and constantly being updated). But besides the fact that the commands are under a menu (except for single forward delete), they still uuse highlighting for deletion... Connection is way faster.

Wow! You're a psychic! Just now, here in Alba, Piemonte (where they make Nutella) I received a nice and "hopeful" response from Ngoc Luu the brains behind 1Writer and an extremely helpful guy. I had sent him the full feature request.

"Hi Steven,

Thank you very much! I will look into it."

An implementation on 1Writer would have me dancing a Hitler Jig. Great little txt editing program.

Later today, I will talk about the joys of Connective Editing....

Thanks again

 

[Futz]

Connective Editing is based on an overlooked fact, namely: highlighting to delete is actually connection by garbage disposal.
No matter if you're Shakespeare or a Monkey who's been sipping 4 Roses all day, when you highlight and then hit backspace... you connect the value that was just beyond the end of the highlighting to the cursor position.
So that allows us to say that editing is "connective" in its blind mechanics.

What is the difference between Shakespeare's act and Bobo's? Well, Shakespeare ends the highlighting where he does PRECISELY because he wants to connect to the value just beyond the end of the highlighting.

Mary loves ==()//&.... bla blabla44444X John
Mary loves ==()//&.... bla blabla44444X John

Shakespeare knows the value he wants... obviously John... Unless we're involved in bulk deletion, we ALL know what we want precisely because we end our deletive selection right in front of it.

So editing is CONNECTIVE in its pondered purpose.

So... instead of highlighting all the garbage by literally caressing it with a finger that must rise from the virtual keyboard and often can't easily reach all the "doomed" text, and hitting backspace, why not CONNECT directly to that desired value and let the cancellation take care of itself?

Mary loves J[§]==()//&.... bla blabla44444X John

The Microsoft Anomaly​

We highlight to COPY and paste (repeat) text that will live on in the final document
We highlight to CUT and paste (move) text that will live on in the final document.
We highlight to FORMAT (prettify) text that will live on in the final document.

AND THEN

We highlight to DESTROY text that will NOT live on in the final document

IOW, we must lavish the same time and effort on the garbage as the gems.

This Anomaly was cool on big fat computers but on handhelds, the form factor makes highlighting a drag.

Have a pleasant Friday!

 

[Thomas1977]

I know this is not really iPad related but along time ago Apple had something called AppleWorks.it was a very early word processing program.

 

[scifan57]

I know this is not really iPad related but along time ago Apple had something called AppleWorks.it was a very early word processing program.

They now have Pages, their current such program.

 

[Futz]

I know this is not really iPad related but along time ago Apple had something called AppleWorks.it was a very early word processing program.

Hello Thomas,
Don't hate me, but I've never been an Apple person for regular computers - This was always more a matter of cost than ideology. All I cared about was word processing, not graphics or music.

I started on an Olivetti XT with a DOS operating system... and WordStar.

Then in the mid-Eighties I moved to MS Word (for DOS) and that is when I cobbled my silly little macro.

The process was: Damn, when translating a screenplay (from Italian to English) every BLASTED word had to be read, translated and then DELETED... Every single word (a script is about 20K words)... But there was one major exception... The names of the Characters. With very rare exceptions, they remained the same. They were GOOD-TO-GO.

So just mucking around with WORD 5's very primitive macro language, I came up with something that spared me the trouble of highlighting up to and EXCLUDING character names. I would just connect to them directly.

But you know something? The etymology of "name" and "noun" is the same...

And so once the translation was finished and I had to go back to the top and polish it up... (at that point the job was standard editing, English on English), I found myself connecting to words.

And I found that the "GOOD-TO-GO" concept was actually closer to how editors THINK.

For example: take this piece of bad prose:

It was a gloriously luminous day.
​

Reading it over... the writer (now editor) says: "Bleah, what's wrong with just plain and simple and unpretentious "sunny".

So he inserts the improvement.

It was a sunny gloriously luminous day.
​

Now it's obvious that the writer needs to delete "gloriously luminous". The question is: what's on his mind? Does he want to delete "gloriously luminous" because he doesn't like those words?

Not really, that was decided when he tapped in "sunny". Now he wishes to re-connect to that part of the text he's happy with.... his GOOD-TO-GO word.... In this example the word "day"

It was a sunny d[§]gloriously luminous day
​

Pure "creative" writing is filling up a blank screen at the speed of inspiration.

Once upon a long long time ago in a magic kingdom there lived a dragon and la-di-da...

Editing instead is work on already existing text, generally for the purpose of improvement.

So the writer/editor adds and subtracts, tightens and embellishes... there is change change change... but then invariably a RE-CONNECTION to what he is content with. (or to a position, ie. the end of a paragraph). His GOOD-TO-GO.

Presently these re-connections are carried out by the old-fashioned method of garbage disposal. And on the flat screens the editor must literally caress (with a finger) all the words he will destroy... when he could very easily CONNECT to his desired value!

Have a wonderful Saturday