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General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for list of read-only editors
« Last post by Paul Keith on December 27, 2009, 03:09 AM »I was speaking model as in MVC - guess I should just have used the word "data" instead. Something that changes your data would be an editor; something that doesn't, isn't.
-f0dder (December 26, 2009, 02:47 PM)
That's the dream though. (or in my case, my goal for making this list, in order to find a read-only editor that matches that kind of scope.)
In terms of framework, anything like this doesn't really come close.
BUT!
...you see concepts like these slowly inching into casual use in notetakers.
Once a concept mostly used for text inputting slowly becomes something you clip, you bookmark, you rate, you highlight, you annotate
BUT!
...You do that because you want to archive it.
...You do that because you want to rely on search engines or tags to find that snippet.
...You even do that because you're looking for a piece of entry.
Annotations, bookmarks, etc. might not be it but the goal (well my search) is to find something that really separates desktop reading from paper reading but instead of a viewer that makes it easy to read archives, how about an editor that makes archive into interactive books plus the lazy.
Interactive books as in PrintWhatYouLike Selective TextBlock Deletion/Selective Document Merging.
Interactive books as in Session Managers that don't just bookmark the files but saves the group tab and makes it easy to group and delete the sessions without opening them. (A combination of Opera and Session Manager's features.)
Interactive books that allow you to selectively replace a text via your own custom thesaurus - but no distracting you with other features even basic ones that form a toolbar.
Interactive books showing your own custom MindMap Style Table of Contents + Your Notes via a single right click command.
Scoaring your own notes to find related things you might have jotted down before and showing it in a side panel.
Allowing you to mouse cursor hover preview not only the contents of the text but your own external annotations as opposed to internal ones.
Internal annotations that aren't just annotations but allows you to insert your own entry into a document and have it smart interpret it as a change not to be done in the original document (minus the duplicate document creation) and even having the program be able to smartly store the changed version within the program as a separate entry (without interrupting the program via an external save or creating a duplicate tab/entry of the same entry within the program thus requiring you to think up of a different name for the duplicate or right click duplicate) and one that on a click can show the textual difference via text color difference while at the same time revert it to the same text color if you don't want to see the changes.
Text trimmers that auto-segments any document entries into readable segments of your own choosing so that you can read these entries in manageable chunks and acts like a per-occassion PopUp Wisdom (with the easy option to continue reading if you choose to.)
Text color changes that rates whether your bound to be encountering a section that might be long and you are better off resting your eyes via a custom heuristics that changes the color of the text via severity so that when your eyes are getting tired, you're not going to be trapped in a long winding section of a document you're barely registering out of fatigue.
Even something as simple as an automated notetaker that jot down notes based on a custom heuristic like: These are words you might want to Wikipedia/Google/Clusty/Delicious... or even something as simple as a reader that gives you the ability to auto and quickly change reading templates/font text/font colors based on time of day/holiday/mood or even something that gives pre-set music (or custom music) like OmniWriter does. (at least I assume it does that because I never tried it)
...and that still ignores the whole gamut of improvements that are catalog discovery related.
Yes, all these possible features don't fit the herculean concept that is a controller but unlike the stereotypical view of editors as active (consumption/minor tweaks) -> work/produce (edit/program/hack), the herculean concept of read-only software (once it passes the basic structure) turns into a similar revolution of NotePad into Notepad++, Latex, MS Word, DreamWeaver, PhotoShop...even Wordpad.
Once you pass the basic structure of the goal in which there are enough clones, the next feature set is to elongate the goal into something else. Something more powerful but something that's also a different animal.
In this process, what is normally perceived pedantically as a feature set that doesn't change the data, actually changes the data.
Sounds oxymoronic but it's true.
Notetaking/Programming/Designing/etc. doesn't consider "not changing the model" as editing because the original form isn't the goal (or at least not the end product.)
The goal of reading though is the original form. It is a passive task to consume but to maximize the consumption.
A close analogy to the difference between the two is with regards to cooking and eating.
When you're cooking, chopping something might not be considered editing. Chopping something so that it (combined with other factors) produces a tastier, more attractive, lovelier to eat food is editing though.
With eating however, slicing something is considered editing.
Both are the same motions though. Both are even synonyms in a bird's eye pedantical view (for most people).
...until you focus on the context and realize there's casual chopping/slicing (that can happen to an amateur cook/normal everyday eater) and there's a refined way of chopping that increases in complexity, the better skilled the cook is.
In reading, there's hard reading/there's soft reading/there's reading for fun and there's reading for information among many other vague models.
In that model, controlling the view is not about being a reader. No, everyone who reads or is reading is a reader.
Controlling the view in the context of a reader, is editing. Mostly filtering the information so that it becomes better consumed by the brain or even more fun to reread or to look back into.
...but in the software world, filtering is more associated with search.
...but we're not searching, we want to read.
Similarly a slicer is associated more with slide shows and freeing memory.
A magnifier is associated more with zooming.
A cinema mode/distraction-free is a specific feature that eliminates lots of other features.
A processor is associated with editors but even more specific towards the MS Office program, Word.
Really, the only common association (one that makes one who reads the topic and thinks he knows of a program to suggest) is the word editor and reader.
...and even there it's complicated as you see how most readers in the vein of EReader and MobiPocket are more "E-book Readers" and not treated as E-book viewers. (No offense intended to your suggestion wraith808, they're popular examples and not bad ones but I am trying to expand the scope here.)
P.S. Sorry for still not checking out ybook. Been distracted.
Btw I don't really know what I'm talking about. First time I've even heard of MVC, I'm just mostly guessing here based on your comments and the words associated in the term. (I didn't even read the Wikipedia Link, just based my reply on the image. Sorry.)
