CREF: An Editing Facility for Managing Structured Text

Abstract

This paper reports work in progress on an experimental text editor called CREF, the Cross Referenced Editing Facility. CREF deals with chunks of text, called segments, which may have associated features such as keywords or various kinds of links to other segments. Text in CREF is organized into linear collections for normal browsing. The use of summary and cross-reference links in CREF allows the imposition of an auxiliary network structure upon the text which can be useful for "zooming in and out" or "non-local transitions." Although it was designed as a tool for use in complex protocol analysis by a "knowledge Engineer's Assistant," CREF has many interesting features which should make it suitable for a wide variety of applications, including browsing, program editing, document preparation, and mail reading.