From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn) Subject: Re: Let's write a wordprocessor. Date: 23 May 1993 19:45:49
Nntp-Posting-Host: newton.canterbury.ac.nz
>In article p3j@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes:
>>[This came up on comp.os.linux, but I believe the TeX crowd should
>>be in on this as well]
>>
>>msb@cats.ucsc.edu (Maurice S Barnum) writes:
>>
>>>I think the perfect word processor would be a front end to tex,
>>>possibly with it's own macro package, maybe using latex.
>>
>>I'd very much advise using LaTeX, to get the logical structure
>>of documents into it (something that most wysiwig word processors
>>are notoriously bad at).
Sounds like not a bad idea...
[stuff deleted...]
>>
>>As far as functionality goes, I think it would be a good idea to look at
>>what AucTeX offers (an excellent EMACS macro package for dealing with
>>LaTeX), then wrap this functionality up in menus.
>
>Which is fairly trivial using either Lucid Emacs or Epoch + a menubar
>program
>
since when has emacs been WYSIWYG???
>>>Printer drivers? an interface to ghostcript
>or just a decent set of dvi* filters
Or just plain old postscript. Why force someone to run
ghostscript/whatever when they have a postscript printer (or print
filters setup already to run ghostscript)
>>
>>Screen preview? xdvi.
>
>Hear hear
>
*GAG* you mean I have to run *TeX and then run xdvi just to see if
moving the indentation 3mm to the left makes a more pleasing looking
document?
I hate to rain on the TeX parade but you are forgetting the tone of
the original post. That was the author wanted something like Word on
the Mac, ya know, shows you the fonts as specified, your indentaions
and so on are all shown on the screen. No stuffing about pressing
keys and then waiting for *TeX to have it's evil way and then running
up xdvi to look at the results, what we need is something that shows
the fonts and formatting on the screen and you can snag bits of the
text and change the properties of the text and actually see the
results of that change.
Obviously it can be done, WordPerfect have done it. I am not saying
they have done it correctly or endorsing the product but it does show
that a WYSIWYG X windows processor can be done. Emacs is a fine
programming editor, it is not a fine wordprocessor. TeX (and it's
derivatives) is a fine document typesetting package it is nowhere near
a WYSIWYG wordprocessor.
One possible approach would be to somehow take TeX and mangle it from
a batch oriented, device independent output sort of thing into an
interactive, X oriented one. The normal display could be the final
output (making it WYSIWYG) but have a magic button that allows you to
edit the raw TeX, a similar sort of philosophy to the "reveal codes"
in WordPerfect