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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: embedded-command text systems [vs WYSIWYG, support for Reid]
Message-ID: <3064@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 7-Dec-85 02:23:20 EST
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Posted: Sat Dec  7 02:23:20 1985
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> 2] In one sense the "dinosaur" comment is sadly true.  After all, the
> fundamental ideas of nroff/troff derive from 20-year-old runoff...
> the troff/tbl/eqn/(-ms or -mm) group was all there by late 1976.
> ...As I recall, Scribe and TeX appeared in 1978 [reid, correct me please!]
> We've certainly made engineering progress in the use and support of these
> things; what's not clear is how much fundamental progress we've made.

Well, I certainly consider the change from the "tell it what to do, in
detail" model to the "tell it what you want" model (more particularly, the
change from ".in", ".ti", traps, diversions, etc. to the object/stylesheet
model) to be fundamental progress (although various macro packages and
preprocessors put a model like this on top of, to use the wonderful phrase
of someone here, "full-frontal troff").

> I've generally thought that the text-processing system I've always
> wanted on my desk needed
> a) WYSIWYG editing + the best of structural description.  The latter should
> be able to do about as well as Scribe or troff -MM, else no go.
> b) Integrated graphics, images

What's missing in systems like Interleaf?  It does have an object/stylesheet
model, so it provides some amount of structural description (derived,
according to somebody from Interleaf, from the model of the Etude system at
MIT).  It also has integrated graphics, and even MacPaint-ish images in the
latest release of the top-of-the-line version.

> c) interactive eqn, and especially tbl equivalent.

Interleaf doesn't have an interactive EQN equivalent, and it supports
multiple varieties of tabs but no TBL equivalent, to my knowledge.  I
believe the Xerox Star software does have interactive EQN and possibly TBL
equivalents, though.

> d) Multiple concurent views that let me edit at least the formatted
> (WYSIWYG) view or the markup-language view [I'd like Hypertext-like
> features, and holphrastic displays on document structure, and a bunch
> of others, but no need to get greedy.]

Sounds somewhat like IBM's Janus, where there were two screens, one of which
displayed the formatted text and one of which displayed the text+markup
language.  My own prejudice is that I'd rather spend 99-100% of my time
editing the formatted view, and maybe have an Etude/Interleaf-style sidebar
showing the object types of the markup and pop-up property sheets to show
the object attributes.  (I find markup information quite distracting, except
when I'm actually editing it; most of the time, I'm editing the content of
the document, not its style.)

> f) Desktop workstation with 8-10X VAX-780 integer performance, 8-32MB
> memory, [my guess at what it takes to do a)-f) with reasonable programming.]

I think this is rather more than what's needed.  From what I've seen, a
system like Interleaf seems fast enough, and it runs on a desktop
workstation with (if I remember our corporate propaganda correctly) ~1X
VAX-750 integer performance, and 2-4MB memory).  (And no, Interleaf does NOT
require the raster-op chip - it runs on the newer Suns which don't have it.)

	Guy Harris