Glossary » line-oriented interface
line-oriented interface
A user interface based on a user editing individual lines of text at a time, especially with regard to early text editors. In such systems, instead of moving around in the document as in screen-oriented editors or graphical user interfaces, the user could enter commands to list out lines within a document or could specify a line to edit. The user could edit an individual line by inserting and removing characters and moving the cursor left and right. While this level of interaction seems quite primitive, it was largely dictated by the constraints of the technology (some line editors used line printers as the output device, rather than CRTs) and by the speed of interaction with shared computers.
