From: msb@cats.ucsc.edu (Maurice S Barnum) Subject: Re: Let's write a wordprocessor. Date: 21 May 1993 00:38:47 GMT
In <1993May20.160559.51651@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> dlj0@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (DAVID L. JOHNSON) writes:
>>wysiwyg, it would make approximate line breaks, etc. as you go
>>until enough information was entered for a full page, then it
>>would format that. (Well, maybe that's configurable, since there
>>are times when you don't care THAT much. Sort of like Word's
>>distinction between normal and page views). If you want a good
>>idea of what it's going to look like NOW, click somewhere, and
>>it'll run everything through tex, insertting a "\vfill\bye" at
>>the end. When done, click somewhere else to format/preview/print
>>for real. One difference from typing tex stuff: no funky
>>characters will be interpreted by default---if you want to type
>>stuff for tex to see itself, click somewhere else (or change
>>modes at startup).
>>
>I'm not sure what you're talking about here.
basically: the problem with Word, etc. is that line breaks cannot
be made optimally until there's enough text to form a paragraph.
But from what I understand, TeX works "by-the-page", so that if
you can't use TeX to see what things are going to look like until
the page is done. (oh, TeX does the formatting, even if LaTeX is
being used. hope I got the silly caps right :)
About the rest of the paragraph quoted above, the question, what
do you do when someone enters "\em" or "$" --- I think that by
default these should NOT be considered TeX codes. That would
defeat one of the purposes of having a wysiwyg editor.
I guess I'll also respond to the Great Productivity Debate: who
cares? Some people will always want a wywsiwyg word processor or
desktop publishing program. I thought this long thread (which is
in an awful group, by the way, but I don't know where to redirect
it to) was about developing a freely distributable word processor,
not about whether we should be using such a thing in the first
place. But if you'll excuse me, I'm going to read linux news
now...
--
Maurice S. Barnum --- I consult, therefore I am:
Ask me, and I shall answer.
Believe me, and I shall laugh.
msb@cats.ucsc.edu, mbarnum@eis.calstate.edu, mbarnum@nyx.cs.du.edu