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Subject:Re: Non-alphabetic Characters From:"Nancy S. Burns" <nburns -at- NOAO -dot- EDU> Date:Wed, 8 Dec 1993 09:11:02 -0825
Responding to Alun Whittaker and Sue Gallagher's recent postings:
With respect to the use of the terms "insertion point" and "I-beam", both
are used in the Macintosh environment. The "Macintosh User's Guide", when
describing how to change a document, reads:
"The insertion point - the blinking vertical line - is where
anything you type appears.
The I-beam pointer replaces the arrow pointer when you're dealing
with text. You control the I-beam pointer with the mouse as you
would the arrow pointer."
These terms are also used in other Macintosh manuals.
With respect to the PC and UNIX environments, I still see the blinking
underscore referred to as "cursor" in manuals.
If you don't want to repeat " insertion point" and "I-beam pointer",
perhaps you could define them once, and then use "point" and "pointer"
respectively.
Nancy S. Burns
National Solar Observatory
Tucson, Arizona