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From: edb@io.UUCP (Ed Blachman x4420)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG = DIY (=hubris)
Message-ID: <1216@io.UUCP>
Date: 11 Aug 89 19:06:06 GMT
References: <210927@<1989Jul28> <8800031@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <14903@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <387@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl>
Organization: Interleaf Inc, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 65

eykhout@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl (Victor Eijkhout) writes:

>In article <14903@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> hugo@griggs (Peter Su) writes:
>>I claim that WYSIWIG are overly concerned with form, and no concerned
>>enough about with the logical operations that result in the form 
>>that you want.

>How about this one: I come to this designer with a manual of which
>I have already typed the first 40 pages, say that's 100 sections and
>subsections, and she tells me 'Oh please do all your headings
>in capitals'.

>Or this one: I have keyed in a linear algebra course, hundreds of
>exercises, and she says 'It would look nice if all your
>exercises [that I did TeXbook style, first two lines indented]
>were completely indented, with the number flush against the left
>margin and a dotted line leading up to the first word'.

>In both cases my texts were in TeX (with some provisory macros
>so that I could at least print), and implementing those changes
>took 5 minutes each.

>Question: can someone tell me that with a wysiwig it is just
>as easy to make a global design change?

Ok, I know that tooting one's company's own horn is kind of frowned on
 hereabouts, but *someone* should say it: it all depends on the WYSIWYG
 system you're talking about.  Some WYSIWYG systems *are* well set up to
 allow you to make global changes of the kind you just described.  My
 personal experience with such systems has been that I have found them
 easier to learn than markup oriented systems like TeX.

Does this mean that everyone will find them easier to learn and to use?
 Of course not; people's mileage varies.  But on the WYSIWYG systems
 I've used, 5 minutes seems like about the right amount of time to make
 the changes you described.

>Conjecture: wysiwig systems are for people who make their own
>layout, and who have decided on the definitive layout
>before they started keying in the text. This I think is a wrong
>way of working. I think I have a right to say this, because I've
>produced some 'master pieces of the printing art', and the design
>was done by a pro, and only after I had finished the text.

I think the key point of WYSIWYG systems is the direct feedback.  Wanna
 know what your pages will look like if you narrow your column-width
 slightly, or go from one-column to two-column design, or choose a dif-
 ferent typeface?  In a good WYSIWYG system there's essentially no syn-
 tax to learn to make the change, and you can immdeiately see whether
 the effect is pleasing or not.  That feels to me like an easier way
 to validate a design than the trouble of twiddling markup, followed by
 proofing a document (either to a previewer or to paper).

As for design by pros vs. design by amateurs: I guess I agree that pros
 have a lot to contribute to design -- certainly the task of developing
 an effective and pleasing layout is not a simple one.  But that's inde-
 pendent of the implementation of that design.  I'm not a designer --
 but if I were, I think I'd find it easier to deal with a WYSIWYG sys-
 tem than a markup system, as the former would mean that I could concen-
 trate on design, without the cognitive load of having to learn a markup
 language.

>Victor.

Ed Blachman		edb@ileaf.com	(or)	...!mit-eddie!ileaf!edb