COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	ebos.2[w86,jmc]		Detailed ideas for ebos
C00005 ENDMK
C⊗;
ebos.2[w86,jmc]		Detailed ideas for ebos

I think we should try to plan EBOS rather thoroughly before we
start building it, and I would prefer to begin with how it looks
to its users.

1. An idea.  We need a general way of handling "indexicals".  The
term is taken from linguistics and refers to words like  now  and
here  and  I  and  you.  In EBOS indexicals refer, for example,
to the current file, the current position of the cursor, etc.  The
point is that each of these is a synonym for a complex name, and
what name it is a synonym for depends on context.  Perhaps my ideas
on a formal theory of context may be useful here or this concrete
problem may help refine those ideas.

2. Perhaps we should begin with the editor.  I think we should
imitate EMACS in making the main mode one in which characters typed
go directly into the text.

3. modifiers.  The Common Lisp syntax for modifiers is to include
them as additional arguments to a function preceded by a special
symbol.  Unix precedes command line modifiers by a minus sign.
My grade school teacher defined adjectives as modifiers of nouns.
Consider "alleged criminal".  Clearly it isn't a kind of criminal
but is a modification of the concept.

In EBOS modifiers give rise to two questions.  One is notation,
and the other is meaning.  I propose that the meaning of a modifier
is a function applied to the syntactic entity being modified.
In most cases the function will be rather trivial, and we need to
check whether preserving the generality costs too much.  Probably
it won't.  The other problem is what syntax to use.  Something
like the way Unix does it seems reasonable.