Contemporary Cybernetics

The recent copy of the ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 14, 3, 1982, deals with some of the problems of the “User‐Interface”. All who use computer systems, and particularly the Cybernetician, are concerned at the way in which information is stored, retrieved and edited. All too often, untried methods are implemented, and software engineers fail to search the literature for established and efficient techniques. Two papers in this issue of Computing Surveys brings together details of current editing and user interface developments. The first paper is about using and implementing interactive editing systems and the second, concerned with document formatting systems. Here interactive editing refers to the process of making changes to documents by direct, rather than batched, communication with the computer, during which the user's actions are interleaved with the computer's feedback on the results of each action.