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From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Betting on Unix
Date: 13 Mar 1997 17:58:08 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 74
Message-ID: <5g9f7g$th@web.nmti.com>
References: <5d3sr2$44n@nntp1.best.com> <5g02nk$q63$1@venus.mcs.net> <5g1grm$glu@web.nmti.com> <5g5ddm$qcf$1@venus.mcs.net>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:164192 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6308 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2793 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:56772
In article <5g5ddm$qcf$1@venus.mcs.net>, Leslie Mikesell <les@MCS.COM> wrote:
> In article <5g1grm$glu@web.nmti.com>, Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote:
> >> >If I defer making it pretty until the last step why am I bothering with a
> >> >WYSIWYG environment?
> >> Because you can see what you're doing,
> >More or less, except it's not what it's really going to look like, and you
> >don't get to really see what the functional markup is.
> In what way does it look different, other than possible font mismatches if
> you display Truetype, print postscript or embed EPS with no preview bitmap?
Because you're deferring all that until the last step.
> There is a tradeoff between the way WP and Word do things. WP lets you
> see the codes, but in Word for the types of attributes that apply to
> paragraphs and other document parts only one attribute can be active.
> That means you can apply styles/codes without having to find the old
> codes and delete or change them.
That's a user-interface problem... that is, WP doesn't examine the codes
you're applying and remove the conflicts.
> >> because you can let someone else do it for you,
> >No I can't, not if I want the functional markup.
> You could compromise and do everything with styles. At least in
> Wordperfect your styles can expand to anything (even plain text)
> and can be defined as paired or single items.
Yes, WordPerfect is a GUI on top of a conventional text processor. It's
a much beter design, and if the GUI was as well integrated with the
underlying implementation it'd be a very nice tool indeed.
Word can't do this sort of thing nearly as easily.
> >If I write in SGML it'll be usable by 100%, since I can convert the SGML
> >into HTML, which everyone can read. Word will even import it and let me
> >do WYSIWYG... I wonder how hard it'd be to wrap the Postscript output
> >into PDF?
> WP 7 will generate HTML
We've been using this feature. It's pretty damn horrible HTML... all graphical
markup rather than functional. It doesn't really save the document as HTML.
Rather, it treats HTML as a printer format and renders the document into it.
> I guess that would make sense if there were a free WYSIWYG SGML editor.
Assuming you value style over substance, yes.
> >> I prefer that myself, but only programmers think in terms where
> >> you can solve any problem by adding one more layer of indirection.
> >But that's what Word forces you to do, for any significant sized document.
> Somehow I don't see selecting 'list bullet' from a style menu and having
> it happen on-screen as being all that indirect.
The GUI hides the indirection, but it's still there. You're not selecting
"put a dot here" you're selecting "create a new list entry with the defined
attributes".
> Maybe someday they'll get it right and you
> won't have to trade handiness for versatility.
I'm not holding my breath.
--
The Reverend Peter da Silva, ULC, COQO, BOFH.
Har du kramat din varg, idag? `-_-'