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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: To WYSIWYG or not to WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <3067@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 7-Dec-85 02:49:03 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3067
Posted: Sat Dec  7 02:49:03 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Dec-85 03:34:36 EST
References: <793@bu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 21

> WYSIWYG is great for short, simple documents (very short, very
> simple).  It is nearly useless for anything more than a few pages, and
> the uselessness seems to go up as the square of the size of the
> document.

To use Brian Reid's phrase, BALONEY.  I've used a WYSIWYG system for doing
rather large documents, and it beat the living **** out of doing it with
"nroff" (no, we were not doing it on fancy printers, just dumb-ass
Spinwriters).

> I think the best thing to do is to own both, thus keeping the WYSIWYG
> very simple and not be tempted to pump it full of features to help
> with long documents. It would also mean the investment in learning
> the WYSIWYG is minimal compared to the convenience.

No!  If you're going to pump something full of features to help with long
documents, pump a WYSIWYG system rather than an embedded-markup system, if
you can.  It may not be possible, but *ceteris paribus*, I'd rather have a
WYSIWYG system.  You've just been looking at the wrong WYSIWYG systems.

	Guy Harris