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From: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <320@polaris.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 21:07:58 EST
Article-I.D.: polaris.320
Posted: Wed Dec  4 21:07:58 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 04:35:27 EST
References: <280@opus.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Organization: IBM TJ Watson RC
Lines: 37
Summary: 

In article <280@opus.UUCP> rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) writes:
>My major discomforts with wysiwyg are where there's not enough information
>kept.  What should be stored is the INTENT of the user--things like new
>paragraph, outline number, etc., and not the RESULT of interpreting the
>user's intent to put things on the page.  Think of the stored form of a
>document as a program--you want the user to be able to edit in terms of
>the source code, not the object code!

one thing that several people i know who design simple WYSIWYG text
processing systems have problems with is how to remember what you did
to make that complex {equation, diagram, etc.} over there so that you
can make a new one over here.  having a dedicated text processing
workstation with bitmapped graphics and all that is nice, but it's
also expensive.  with my PCTeX, i can get by (just) with an Epsom until
i upload to a mainframe and use a laser printer.

this discussion reminds me very much of what must have gone on
when interactive program development was first catching on and
people were still using cards and batch processing.  most people
using terminals do "interactive batch".  same with text processing
these days, only the WYSIWYG text processors are by and large
not very sophisticated yet.  until the state of the art improves a
whole lot, the average WYSIWYG editor gets a lot better, and the
price of hardware drops even more, i'll stay with batch text
processing because i can get more done.

Herb Chong...

I'm still user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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