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From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <133@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 10:57:39 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.133
Posted: Thu Dec  5 10:57:39 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Dec-85 07:50:57 EST
References: <280@opus.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 50

> I think there's some misunderstanding of just what wysiwyg implies,
> however. 

I suspect most of the argument lies right here, and we're probably arguing
semantics and not real content.  I have always taken WYSIWYG as meaning
the manner in which the material is presented to the user, not the way it
is handled internally by the program.  Is this wrong?

> Wysiwyg is NOT a matter of how the information is entered or modified.
> What it sez is simply "what you see is what you get"--meaning that the
> presentation of the document on the screen, as you create and edit it,
> reflects as closely as possible the way the document will appear when
> finally printed.

Exactly... although I prefer "displayed to the reader" to "printed."

> This takes a LOT of computation. 

[Detailed description of computation problems ... ]

> Moving on to another comment from Raymond Dunn:
> > Tex, and the current UNIX tools for typeset text preparation, are
> > rapidly becoming dinosaurs -
> 
> I don't see this happening yet.  Some folks are quite happy to deal with
> the TeX/troff model in order to reduce the amount of computation that it
> takes to prepare things. 
> I don't believe that
> large documents are inherently unworkable for a wysiwyg system, but it
> takes a LOT of work (and occasional blue smoke and mirrors) to get even
> passable performance.  (I should probably be careful about terms here--by
> "large" I mean documents in the range of 100-1000 pages.)

I think this may be the crux of the disagreement -- if there is one.  There
is a real difference in trying to get something to work on existing computers
and deciding on the preferred method in the abstract.  As an example, assume
you have available a Cray-class computer that is cheap ($499.95), and enough
backing ("I need a *big* tax write-off this year ...") to build your "dream
formatter."  Do you build a "dot-command" formatter or WYSIWYG?

Try to guess what computing power you'll have on your desk in 10 year's time.
(I've just been looking at a plug-in board that turns an IBM/PC into a
Vax 11/750 equivalent ...) THEN decide what kind of text manipulator you
would *really* like to be using right now ...

-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU