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