Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wugate!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!vector!attctc!wnp
From: wnp@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: what is a word processor and is it any good
Message-ID: <8735@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 23 Jul 89 12:18:53 GMT
References: <20306@adm.BRL.MIL> <26558@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <18681@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: wnp@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul)
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection BBS, Dallas, Tx
Lines: 46

In article <18681@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>The problem actually goes deeper than this.  The whole point of WYSIWYG
>is that what you see is what you get: you see what you get; you get
>what you see.  *By definition* you cannot get things without seeing
>them; once you do, you are no longer talking about WYSIWYG---if you get
>something without seeing it, then what you see is not what you get.
>At best, what you see is less than what you get.  At worst, what you
>see is completely different from what you get.  Most of the WYSIWYG
>systems I have seen are really somewhere in between, and none have
>been pure WYSIWYG.

No, unless you have something like a previewer on a Sun-size screen,
most everything called WYSIWYG today is actually WYSIaWYG -- "WHAT
YOU SEE IS   A L M O S T  WHAT YOU GET" -- and in many ways this is
worse than batch style editing/formatting.

However, some of the more popular word processors in the PC world,
notably PC-Write, are very much like a combination of editor and
formatter in a UNIX environment. In fact, PC-Write is a shell which
alternately invokes an editor program and a printing program.
You enter dot commands in the editor, and get no feedback until you
print.

And even more expensive and sophisticated programs like MS-WORD do
not act as WYSIWYG systems while you are entering and editing text --
not until you hit the PREVIEW command do you get to see an (often illegible!)
approximation of what your page looks like. So someone could equally
well write a troff or tex screen previewer (maybe this even exists, already)
for a graphics terminal, and add it as a third component to the editor
and print formatter, and you would have a word processor as capable as
MS-WORD 5.0, with the additional benefit of programs like tbl and eqn
(has anyone tried formatting complex tables with Word 4.0/5.0, especially
when using proportionally spaced fonts? Give me *roff with tbl any day!).

And in any case, give me systems which store my files as flat text files,
with formatting instructions embedded where they belong, rather than systems
like WORD, which have their own proprietary file format which is difficult
to decipher and convert to something else, or to rapidly modify using such
tools as sed and awk.

Wolf.
-- 
Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101
UUCP:   {texbell, attctc, dalsqnt}!dcs!wnp
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        NOTICE: As of July 3, 1989, "killer" has become "attctc".