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by smarks159 4059 days ago
The most complete example of a structured editing system I know off is Doug Engelbart's NLS system from the mother of all demos (from 1968!) [0]. In the system text, drawings and code are all structured hyperdocument data. It is quite different from most software we use today. As seen from the demo, structured editing works well not just on code but on also on text.

I have been experimenting with implementing some of these ideas in the browser[1]. I primarily use the system to take text notes with and write down my ideas. You can't program in it yet, but part of the program is driven by datastructures that are created, edited and manipulated in the system itself. Instead of looking and manipulating the raw data, however, you can render the data to look like a pseudo dsl.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

[1] https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-wiki