Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!shelby!siegman@sierra
From: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (siegman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: The programming CULT
Message-ID: <188@sierra.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 2 Aug 90 19:20:58 GMT
References: <312@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> <2840.26b7eb6e@cc.helsinki.fi>
Sender: siegman@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 59

In article <2840.26b7eb6e@cc.helsinki.fi> mnykanen@cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>................. Just yesterday a teacher in my dept. rejected
>my suggestion that Word & Expressionist might be easier than TeX with

This is a side issue from the point you were arguing, but TeX, on a
Mac or PC, with a good previewer, IMHO really CAN be easier than Word
& Expressionist, or similar WYSIWYG systems.

Just for the record, with the current version of Textures on the Mac
you edit your source file using the Mac-like text editor built into
Textures, then hit CTRL-T to start typesetting.  _Within a few
seconds_ the first typeset page appears in the preview window on the
screen.

You can zoom in or out on that page, and examine it in macro or micro
fashion, while typesetting of subsequent pages continues in the
background.  You can go back to the source file and make corrections
or changes in it, while typesetting continues in the background.  As
subsequent pages are typeset (a few seconds each) you can move back
and forth through them and examine them in similar detail, while
typesetting continues in the background.

In other words, it's pretty darn close to WYSIWYG.  But the point I'd
really like to make is that as soon as the situation gets at all
complicated, so-called WYSIWYG really isn't WYSIWYG any more, and the
attempt at having WYSIWYG makes things worse, not better.

Consider some level of subheading in a typical WYSIWYG system.  Sure,
the subheadings will all look on the screen more or less like however
it is they'll really print.  

But this formatting is controlled by some special ruler, or style
sheet, or something like that, associated with that level of subhead;
AND YOU GENERALLY DON'T "SEE" THAT STYLE SHEET IN ANY SIMPLE OR CLEAR
FASHION.

In a TeX source file if I see a line that says

   \subhed2{Section 3.1: Further Properties of WYSIWYG Systems}

I can SEE immediately, not only that this is a level 2 subhead, and
what its contents are, but also what macro definition ("\subhed2"} I
have to jump to (with my text editor) to modify ALL the subheads at
that level.

In a WYSIWYG word processor there is of course also (usually) some way
to get at the style sheet or ruler or whatever it is that will change
the format of all the level 2 subheads; but this process is generally
_different_ in every word processor; it's generally NOT immediately
visible or obvious; it's often arcane or complicated; and it's often
dangerous (it's hard to be sure that you've actually changed ALL the
subheadings you wanted to change, and hard to be sure you haven't
accidentally changed some other things you didn't want to change).

My claim: At some level of complexity -- and not a very high level --
WYSIWYG inherently fails; and a procedural or "markup" or coded style
of formatting like TeX is really easier -- especially when things are
as beautifully designed as TeX, and Textures, are.