Tables and images are the part where every "just use a rope" answer falls apart, so going B-tree feels right. I tried building a minimal rich text editor last year and got stuck exactly at the point where tables stopped being attachable as metadata and needed to live in the structure itself, ended up shelving it. Good to see someone actually push through it.
Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#32> - Real WYSIWYG editing (no HTML layer, no embedded browser) with styles, images and tables. > - Clean, simple file format (human-readable, diff-friendly, git-friendly, AI-friendly) Very nice! Unfortunately, the UI menus seem to be broken when using a dark-mode GTK theme (e.g. Adwaita Dark).
Yes, I can see what you mean: There are hand coded colors together with system colors. With the dark mode this gives white text on white background for the side panel. Thanks for mentioning.
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#33This is great! Curious about the choice of toolkit: what led you to wxPython?
When you want to develop cross platform apps which use the native widgets, there are not so many options. The two big players are qt and wx.
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#34at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in. I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their document…
That is only for techies. WYSIWYG has won for a reason.
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#35[dead]
I came from the TeX-Approach where all layout elements are boxes which contain other boxes. This box-tree is a kind of DOM if you want. But the box-tree only represents the layout, not the data itself. For the data you usually have a separate object. In Word this used to be the piece table structure, now it is probably something else. I described my approach here, if you want to know how and why: https://codeberg.org/chrisecker/texeltree/src/branch/main/do...
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#36at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in. I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their document…
My prolific Typst use, along with quickly improving side-by-side editors like Typesetter, are rapidly diminishing (in my eyes) the reasons for WYSIWYG to be. Sure, normies need it, yadda yadda. Is it worth the staggering cost? The file format and GUI complexity?
> Is it worth the staggering cost? The file format and GUI complexity?
I was kind of also wondering something like this as I read about different countries switching to linux, and them needing overly complex office software because they are entrenched in the thinking that that need Microsoft office.
Why do you NEED an office clone, what is it in your job that requires anything more than simple text and formatting that something like markdown provides.
I always envy people that can use computers as tools (like scientists/math people) and not fancy distraction devices. Those people, from what I see, don't care about the os, what it looks like, etc... they just want to use the computer as a tool to help them solve problems.
on a third tangent from the point, once I was given a PDF of data to process (instead of just the csv) , because people don't understand computer formats, and try to use things that they think make them look "professional"
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#37at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. I love having access to my files in a standard text format this is super easy to parse, and not being locked into whatever weird format that WYSIWYG decides to store it in. I still don't understand why people still use ~~Microsoft Word~~Copilot document writer , I think they have gotten into some weird mindset that their document…
> at this point, a WYSIWYG just seems like a huge step backwards from just using markdown. Not for a layperson. There’s a reason WYSIWYG word processors completely obliterated the previous “needs an explicit preview mode” generation ones.
Most of the reason was corporate decisions. My wife was perfectly happy writing a novel in WordStar under CP/M on our Osborne. But in offices you have to use what you are given so when our company switched from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word that's what everyone had to learn to use.
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
My apologies. I added the missing file.
Thanks. I got it to run on my work laptop that runs Windows. Selections don't work, and cairo spits out a bunch of errors during the screen redraws. I'll give it a shot on my own Ubuntu laptop.
I have been able to install MiniWord under Windows. It is a bit more challenging.
You should use cairocffi instead of pycairo:
pip install cairocffi
You must add the directory containing libcairo-2.dll to your PATH environment variable. In my case, this is:
C:\Program Files\GTK3-Runtime Win64\bin
Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#39Re: Show HN: A WYSIWYG word processor in Python
#40You had me at "non-HTML-based" ;)
I've been looking for a simple word processor that will let me easily/quickly do basic things and which will let me export to markdown and HTML that isn't terrible like the type word processors create.
I recently found wordgrinder (https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder), which is a terminal-based word processor that's very close to what I've been looking for. A wx-based thing like this might be a bit nicer. So I'll start with one suggestion: support for wordgrinder's .wg format would be real nice :)