Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!ames!lll-winken!uunet!voa3!ck
From: ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Is there any wordprocessor in unix
Summary: WYSIWYG input files need not be tied to particular printers.
Message-ID: <178@voa3.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jul 89 01:01:33 GMT
References: <4856@macom1.UUCP> <248@arnor.UUCP> <10507@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern)
Organization: Voice of America, Washington, D.C.
Lines: 25

In article <10507@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>
>             . . . the (fairly) "standard" UNIX formatting facilities
>rely on embedded formatter commands (which can be edited with a standard
>system text editor), with formatting performed separately to map the
>common formatter input text file onto a variety of different output
>media without requiring any changes in the input file to accommodate
>output device characteristics, something WYSIWYG formatters cannot do.

If WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") word-processing software
is sensibly designed, it should not be necessary to alter the input file
to accommodate different output devices.  The word processor can emit
an intermediate object file in a page description language.  Then it
becomes the responsibility of the program that drives the output device
to crack the format of the intermediate file.

This approach may add some overhead, but it has compensating advantages.
Word processors, or other programs that prepare files that are intended
to be printed, need only know how to produce one object file format,
regardless of the variety of available printers.  Printers (or the software
that drives them) need only understand a single input format, no matter how
many different programs are used to prepare input files.
-- 
Chris Kern			     Voice of America, Washington, D.C.
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