The Tunes Interfaces Subproject

Word Processing Considerations


With Tunes, one must be able, with reasonable ease, to create high-quality text-based documents. Frankly, I'm tired of resorting to my 68020 Mac to create professional looking stuff using a most horrid MS Word while my Linux-based Pentium 90 sits on my desk, idle.

Tunes' WP Goals

Chris Ambles...

In Tunes, I think we should abolish the modern-day concept of a word processor. Programs such as MS Word have 100x as many features as a simple text program ought to, and, as a result, is very big, slow and non-intuitive. Tunes must be different.

First off, I think Word Processing really falls under the greater category of "Professional 2D Document Publishing", something that also includes graphics and DTP. (Perhaps this page is misnamed, but I figured a 12 sylable name would be a bit obnoxious.) The future of such publishing seems to be heading towards, and should head towards, much more modular, flexible and open architectures, architectures, perhaps such as OpenDoc and OLE, where small, managable-sized components are stacked together to build much more friendly, usable working environments.

In Tunes, there should exist seperate text, graphics, spell-check, thesaurus, ... modules, each of which is loosely integrated with the rest, and each of which is easy to replace, should a better or preferable version come along.

My personal preference is towards WYSIWYG interfaces, somewhat like (though much more OO than) today's DTP packages, or perhaps even ClarisWorks. However, how such interfaces could be readily created in text-only mode, some auditory-only mode, or through some other "strange" method of interaction, remains a mystery to me.


Up to the Interfaces Subproject
Up to the Tunes Home Page
Page maintainer: Chris (chrisha@simba.lakeside.sea.wa.us)
Last Update: 12/19/95