Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!dartvax!chocorua!hugo From: hugo@chocorua.dartmouth.edu (Peter Su) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: WYSIWYG vs programmed phototypsetting Keywords: WYSIWYG, TeX, LaTeX, troff, MacDRAW Message-ID: <10206@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: 28 Sep 88 15:01:13 GMT References: <1141@mmm.UUCP> Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU Reply-To: hugo@chocorua (Peter Su) Organization: Dartmouth College Lines: 32 In article <1141@mmm.UUCP> schultz@mmm.UUCP (John C Schultz) writes: > >pro WYSIWYG > >- hardcopy is identical to display >- immediate "results" Niether of these are always true. With the Mac at least, the screen cannot come close to displaying what will go one when you print your document to a laser printer, so WSYWIG is a misnomer. Also, most Mac processors are so painfully slow at doing anything substantial that it isn't worth bothering. Mac word processors tend to over emphasize the importance of bells and whistles and underemphasize the importance of real *text* processing. Of course, this true for most IBM programs as well. (Sorry, pet peave...) >pro PROGRAMMED > >- worry about content - then formatting Hardly ever the case. For example, the formatting of equations is very closely tied to how they are formatted. Both TeX and troff make you worry a lot about formatting type commands as you input your text. LaTeX and Scribe are better, but still have the same problem. Interestingly, all of your cons are true. This indicates to me that text processors are no where near as good as anybody would like to think. I think that systems that combine the two approaches, and allow the user to specify documents in a more modular way (like outline processor type systems) will do better. Pete