Extensible punctuation — & tagging as punctuating

A textwriter is an ewriter if it’s extended to be an htmlwriter and, now, an xmlwriter. This does not mean it is an HTML “editor” or an XML “editor” any more than, in its first incarnation, it is a text “editor.” The “html-” and “xml-” above abbreviate html’d and xml’d text. These terms specify particular forms of punctuated text. A design artist’s orientation gives way to a writer’s if you think not of marking up text, but of punctuating it — as you write.

A textwriter’s punctuation marks are single characters typed with a key or a Shift+Key. They are passed on through to the final reader by any “typesetter” (such as a browser). The writer uses them about as he or she uses correct spellings. But they serve a different purpose. They mark off segments of text and even the simple comma marks more than a pause.

The “area” of language to pull HTML or XML tagging into is the area of punctuation. The tags, marking off “elements” are very much like the always paired marks such as parentheses. The so-called “empty” tags, the line-break tag for instance, like the comma, can be used in pairs. Or sets.

Setting off a segment of text with “, ....,” seems a much quicker tagging of your articulated thinking than, say, “<blockquote>...</blockquote>.” This is where the ewriting instrument comes in. The writer doesn't want to stop and examine dialogs or whatever. To type a colon, a writer types Shift+SemiColon. To type a comma, the writer types Comma. To type the punctuation mark showing his or her thinking moving into an indented quotation (or some similarly written text), the writer, using eWriter, types Ctrl+Q.

Frame punctuation. Writers can get lost in parenthetical remarks, subordinate clauses or any other pair of marks, where the forward mark is to be typed when the embedded thought is completed. In eWriter, frame punctuation is “on keys.” If you type Shift+9, you get the opening parenthesis mark. Later, you type Shift+0 to get the closing parenthesis mark. If you type Ctrl+9, you get “(|)”. (The upright line is the writing point where you type the text within the parentheses.) You don't forget you are in a parenthetical piece of text. The forward mark is right there.

All the non-empty HTML/XML elements (bounded by tags) are frame punctuation. The writer can see where he or she is, even in complex nested groups of tags. EWriter even has some navigation keys among its punctuation marks, call it dynamic punctuation. Ctrl+Period will take the writing point past the next forward tag. Shift+Ctrl+Period will take it back past the closest tag.

Input punctuation. Anyone who has written in an HTML editor knows the frustration of, say, writing in a link and being faced with not just an interruption, but a dialog with parameters that have to be set. How, then, can an ewriting instrument handle this as punctuation, so you keep writing, even though you indeed punctuate as you go. Well, you have to think of your text as including more of your thinking than before. Tag content is text. Punctuation marks contain text. But no interruption. No dialog and parameters. A sequence of input boxes. You type out your line of text, but some pieces of it go into input boxes. Then, you go on after the last, with your punctuated text typed in. It’s a slightly bumpy road, but as you become a practiced ewriter, you will hardly notice it.

As you move into ewriting, think of punctuation as something much larger than you have assumed it to be in the past. Now, it is a framework-building kit. And it contains its own text, sometimes thought of as metatext, text “about” text, and beyond that, text that shapes text.

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