An Introduction to Information Structures and Paging Considerations for On-Line Text Editing Systems

Since time-sharing and interactive computing have become almost commonplace in the last five years, the idea of on-line creation and modification of programs and their documentation has become widely accepted as a productive and cost-effective use of the computer. In fact, it has been realized that the facilities provided by a time-sharing system’s central editing program and its command language are among the most important determinants of the system’s convenience, power, and consequent utility. At the same time, computer-assisted text editing packages have become accepted in industry and government for the preparation of technical manuals, proposals, and other documents in which many updates are necessary and time is at a premium. Finally, exciting research has been done, notably at the Stanford Research Institute, on the ways in which on-line text- (and picture-) handling systems can enhance all aspects of the user’s programming, writing, and thinking(1).