Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!chuq
From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <3088@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 21-Dec-85 23:25:58 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3088
Posted: Sat Dec 21 23:25:58 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Dec-85 00:26:56 EST
References: <2252@glacier.ARPA> <927@mcvax.UUCP> <30@cad.UUCP> <11272@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2581@glacier.ARPA>
Organization: Sun Micro -- NFS Consulting Group
Lines: 46

>> [Peter Korn]
>>					  Because I can interactively
>>get a feel for what my essay (paper, thesis, whatever) is going to look
>>like as I type it, I find I tend to write better.

> [Brian Reed]
>This, to me, is one of the strongest reasons why I don't use or like WYSIWYG.
>I prefer to concentrate on what my words say, and not on what they look like,
>and I want a display that will not distract me with glittery appearance
>while I am working on content.

[me]
Brian's comments are a non-argument. I could say the same for something like
troff where I have to worry about typing in arcane runes to build up my
glittery appearance (I've been spending the last week typing "\fB" and "\fR"
and "\s+6" and "\s0" to do just that....)

I find that when using either form (my primary writing tool is a Mac, my
secondary is a Sun running troff, and I'm slowly beating Interleaf into
submission) the writing process falls into two stages: content and appearance.
My first pass gets the words right, my second pass gets them nice. I can do it
equally well on either form. You just have to learn to leave the fancy stuff
alone in a WYSIWYG system until you need it. Once I start dealing with the
fancy stuff, though, the Mac tends to be about five times as productive for
me. I tend to define a troff style formatting session as iterative
(edit-format-review) and a Mac session as recursive -- since you see the
format change and can review as you edit, you can modify the editing procedure
as you go. 

There are tradeoffs to both systems. I'm never quite happy with my troff
because I usually quit fine-tuning it before I really want to because I'm
tired of the iterative process -- the "good enough" threshold is lower. The
Mac stuff, on the other hand, can be an infinite process because you spend
your time getting it right to the last pixel (infinite recursion...).

This discussion is actually a religious one. A system is "better" because it
works best for your mindset. I don't think that there is any one "right"  text
formatting scheme any more than there is any one right programming language.
Just because I'm better in C and MacWrite doesn't mean that Brian can't write
equivalent stuff in Cobol and troff, or fortran and TeX. And there are times
when any one of those tools is most appropriate, too.
-- 
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot:        Chuq Von Rospach 
sun!chuq@decwrl.DEC.COM                 {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid}!sun!chuq

Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely.