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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: embedded-command text systems [vs WYSIWYG, support for Reid]
Message-ID: <1750@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Dec-85 18:08:43 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1750
Posted: Thu Dec 12 18:08:43 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Dec-85 20:13:56 EST
References: <471@harvard.ARPA> <773@mmintl.UUCP> <734@tpvax.fluke.UUCP> <258@mips.UUCP>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Distribution: net
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 21
Summary: 


The structural information in a text is often MORE important than its look.
WYSIWYG can handle only the look, even though it may require structural
information to produce that look.

In 1982 I was co-author of a book that was published by Academic Press.
It was written in troff, which could not handle the various font changes
that the publisher wanted.  The problem was easily solved by defining
macros that asserted the type of each object (e.g. quoted sentence, example,
emphasis, epigram ...).  In the text for proof-reading, these appeared
as bold, italic, small-print or what have you, but at the type-setter's
shop they were transformed into the form the publisher wanted.  As authors,
we neither knew how, nor wanted to know how to make effective and elegant
page layouts.  But we COULD tell them what WE wanted in the text.
We could not have done that with a WYSIWYG system, no matter how
powerful.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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