Sudden View

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 Innovative text editor for AtariST? and ported to Windows

 Author:   Rod Coleman
 Homepage: http://www.sudden.net
 Family:   AtariSTEditorFamily MicrosoftWindowsEditors 
 Platform: Windows
 License:  Shareware
 Screenshot:

This is a text editor that long ago was available for Atari ST. It was ported to Windows and now has a new unlimited shareware version available at http://www.sudden.net/

Description retrived using [Internet Wayback Machine]:

What is Sudden View?

Sudden View is a draft tool for the art of editing text.

Sudden View is a simple yet powerful text editor for the Windows 32-bit environment.

Sudden View allows you to see your work from a new dynamic perspective. It allows you to spread text around the screen in the same way an artist applies paint to a canvas.

Sudden View gives you the ability to Instantly Abstract the contents of your text file in a visual and animated fashion. This provides a variably condensed view of your work and can be very effective for navigation and planning.

As a commercial text editor, Sudden View promotes Copy, Cut, Paste and Move to directly manipulated editing primitives using Variant Block Selection and Dynamic Arrangement. This allows you to move your text around the screen as if it were letters on a magnetic board.

There are many other unique features in Sudden View as noted below. Some of these may delight you, others may not. Either way, Sudden View is not just another text editor.

Sudden View Features

Dynamic Arrangement - Sudden View allows you to drag text around the screen in a visually animated fashion using the mouse or arrow keys. Select a block with a left mouse drag and then move it with a left mouse drag.

Variant Block Selection - Sudden View allow you to select several different type of blocks, each with their own features. A Sentence block can be moved through a word-wrapped paragraph on a multi-column line, but a line block selects the entire width of the document. A Literal selection can slice a column vertically, and a character block will move anywhere. Variant Block Selection enhances the effectiveness of Dynamic Arrangement.

Instant Abstraction - Sudden View will progressively shrink detail in a visually animated fashion, leaving the higher level concepts visible for navigation or conceptualizing.

View Bar - In place of the scroll bar is a reduced image of the entire file. It allow for very fast navigation of known structures.

Power Menu - This allows the user to visually select from a keyboard menu without having to learn shortcut or hot keys.

Direct Scrolling - With Sudden View you can drag the contents of the entire screen for navigation.

Virtual Zoom - Sudden View provides font scaling in a visually animated fashion.

Implied Editing Action - Sudden View trades the Insert and Replace editing modes for a single editing action.

Implicit Formatting - With Sudden View, the text IS the format. There are no explicit margin bars. Just define a format with text and copy it as often as you like.


Commentary: RonPerrella

I have to say that I'm not sure about this text editor. It has features that you just can't find anywhere else. The problem is that the editor is unintuitive for those of us who have a history in text editors, particularly on Windows. So, you need to try it because it is powerful and has powerful ideas. But I cannot predict that you will like it.



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Last edited May 11, 2008 11:09 am (diff)
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