>I'm with you all the way on this. We would be able to use real, high powered editors, if we care to. We could use text manipulation programs written in Perl, or whatever, to modify or create code. The visual tools would become just that...tools, rather than the *only* convenient way to get at the code.
>
>Version control would be much more flexible...most V/C packages work best with text files.

Wonderful! Thanks for understanding!

Our mandate (as developers) is to develop solutions that "empower" Users, while we ourselves continue to stumble along using developer tools that surface the underlying architecture (one of the biggest mistakes a product can commit).