by Craig Finseth

Are you interested in text editing, fellow Lains? I would certainly hope so.

For those wanting to go further in expanding their knowledge, ‘The Craft of Text Editing’ is an excellent read.

The book is based on the author’s bachelor thesis examining the underlying principles of text editors of the time. After 11 years, it was expanded into a book to cover the advances and other changes that had occurred in the meanwhile.

The book pays special attention to Emacs-type editors and the choices made in their design, but a majority of the work applies to all text editors and several different ways of doing things are always discussed for each topic.

The subjects covered include the hardware that programs interact with, the language of the editor and the language exposed to the user, the conceptual structure of the edited text, and various editor implementations. There are chapters on redisplay, the user interface, the command set, and several other interesting topics. Lastly, the book makes for an exhilarating look back on computing and the considerations that were taken into account historically. The bibliography also makes for good reading material for those wanting to delve deeper into the topic.

As this is the first recommended reading section for the first Lainzine, I’ll point out that this is not meant to be an exhaustive coverage or a review, but merely a suggestion. I guarantee that any Lain with a healthy interest in the concepts and technology behind their favorite text editor will be thoroughly pleased with this read, especially if they use Emacs.

I look forward to recommending more books to you all.