Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pacbell!att!chinet!mcdchg!clyde!watmath!watdragon!watsol!tbray
From: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG vs programmed phototypsetting
Summary: Red herring, go with descriptive markup
Keywords: WYSIWYG, TeX, LaTeX, troff, MacDRAW, SGML
Message-ID: <8801@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 30 Sep 88 16:05:34 GMT
References: <1141@mmm.UUCP> <30299@bbn.COM>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
Organization: New OED Project, U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 13

>What do people feel are the advantages of WYSIWYG phototypsetting
>(e.g. MacWrite, FRAMEMAKE) vs what I will call "programmed"
>phototypesetting (e.g TeX, LaTeX)?
Clearly for serious typesetting the programmed (more properly
procedural) typesetting systems are more appropriate.  But neither is
the right answer.  The right answer is to design the document using
*descriptive* markup, then when you're finished, use a program to
translate it into troff, TeX, or whatever works best where you are.
An example of a standard for descriptive markup is SGML.

The reasons for this are too long to go into here.  Check out the
excellent article in the Nov. '87 CACM by Coombs et al.
Tim Bray, New Oxford English Dictionary Project, U. of Waterloo