Most Word Processors now offer some form of "smart" cut-and-paste, whereby spaces are removed and/or inserted around the cut-and-pasted text, so it is still correct grammatically.
However, I frequently find myself cutting and pasting clauses or parts of lists, to be left with flying "and"s that must then be moved separately. These word processors have come a long way with their grammar analysis, so I would like to see them move the "and"s automatically when I move dependent clauses or list items. Might as well throw in the "or"s as well.
[If you're not getting this, consider the following example: I originally wrote "...cutting and pasting parts of lists or clauses..." above, then decided this was ambiguous. I cut and pasted "clauses" as follows: "...cutting and pasting clauses parts of lists or..." and then had to go back and separately move the "or" for it to make sense again.]-- DrCurry, Sep 26 2002 Ha. Vengeance satisfied...
No, I think you may be on to something DrCurry. I remember growing indignant that Microsoft had dared "improve", as I saw it, Word97. I thought I preferred cut and paste when you could precision-place the cursor, but turns out I didn't. It would take some getting used to, though. On the whole I don't like machines screwing with my text.-- General Washington, Sep 26 2002 Bliss: I use the Control key shortcuts with some stupid mnemonics.. it didn't take long for it to sink in
CTRL+C: Copy off your buddy... CTRL+V: ... and use it verbatim (paste)
Not that this is exactly a new concept, but maybe it'll help.
DrC: I give you a croissant for the effort, however I'm convinced that there will never be a "smart" word processing program.. Word is constantly f***ing up my documents, capitalizing words I don't want it to, autoformatting my documents after I painstakingly did it manually, turning bulleted points into numbers or vice versa, autocorrecting words like ATi to say ate, moving pictures around... I just had to turn all that crap off.-- Mr Burns, Sep 26 2002 Great idea. I, for one, am sick and tired of Word grabbing an entire word (and sometimes spaces) when I only want part of a word. It forces me to stop working with the mouse and revert to both hands on the keyboard.-- phoenix, Sep 26 2002 you lot with your crappy MS Word formatting problems, you wanna use LaTeX, that's what. I would too, but for the slight problem that my PC refuses to let me install WinEdt. So I'm stuck with Word for the mo, with all the auto-whatsits turned off. And there's nothing which pisses me off more than writing a date like '12th' and having it turn superscripted. However, this solves none of your lazy cut-n-pasting problems. For longer problems than "...cutting and pasting parts of lists or clauses..." -->"...cutting and pasting clauses parts of lists or..." --> "cutting and pasting clauses or parts of lists", I would keep the existing text, put a line through it, and rewrite the sentence alongside. Compare, then delete the original. I guess you've just got to learn to type a bit faster?-- lewisgirl, Sep 26 2002 bliss: I prescribe reading glasses. "Cut and paste" is a paper and scissors term for what we did before we all had PCs; "copy" is an obvious (to me) extension. Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and Ctrl-B (and Apple's earlier versions with the Command button) evidently came about because they are next to each other on the keyboard. (Ctrl-B is "clear", for those who have forgotten; not much used any more.)
N@N: er, no.
lewisgirl: when I did my thesis, I had to use Tex (forerunner to LaTex, I am guessing), and code the PostScript by hand. (We had one of the first Apple laserprinters in Britain, hooked up to the university mainframe.)-- DrCurry, Sep 26 2002 yeah, Nick, I know all that. That's why I wrote //So I'm stuck with Word for the mo, with all the auto-whatsits turned off. //-- lewisgirl, Sep 26 2002 Very interesting, ¯DrCurry. A word processer that had the faculty to do this would be very advanced from what I have seen. I do think that several approachs to a solution are possible:
1. Cut/paste with forwarding address -- after initial edit toggles back/forth to cut site from paste site until next cut site selected. Clean up both sites.
2. Content advisor input -- a style watchdog that sounds off when certain words or conjuctions are orphened. <<you orphened [, and] at your last cut>> Leave it \ Take me back \ Log it for later.
2. Standing root keys -- Could be print-transparent proofreading marks to designate the root clause of a sentence. These could remain at the site of editing or could appear in normal writing as harmless markers. This would probably require the smartest word processor and might actually increase the occurances of poorer writers who cut and paste apposatives or absolute phrases out of context. "Gee, that's pretty easy to remember and it sounds cool!"-- reensure, Sep 26 2002 "Gõdel, Escher, Bach, The Eternal Golden Braid was written/typeset in TeX by Hofstaedter himself.-- bristolz, Sep 26 2002 reensure: you spellchecked that?
bristolz: That does not surprise me in the least. I still haven't found some of the more elegant (and typesettingly (?) proper) features from Tex in the GUI page layout programs.-- DrCurry, Sep 27 2002 [lewisgirl]: Go to Tools->AutoCorrect... and go to the "AutoCorrect as you Type" tab and turn off "Replace as you type: Ordinals with superscript". I'll send you a bill.-- hippo, Sep 27 2002 random, halfbakery