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25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

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Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#11

Post by coldtea »

tikhonj wrote: post #5

With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term. I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than Stack…

>With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term.

That --in the extend that it happens-- is a byproduct of the limitations of current WYSIWYG editors, not something inherent in the idea of WYSIWYG editing.

It's not like we had a lot of brainstorming and innovating solutions competing in this area (in fact, there are only 3, all too similar, major products: Word, Pages and Open Office, of which one has 90% of the users).

Second, what's "inconvenient" and "distracting" for one user, is a must and an inspiration for another.

Not to mention there are several different use cases for WYSIWYG editing, and LaTeX style editing doesn't cover them all. For example it's dreadful for quick experimentation with placement and formatting of small, disparate elements (basically, anything not according to the "spec").

>I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown.

WYSIWYG's strong point is not small website comments.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#12

Post by coldtea »

pkaler wrote: post #7

The thing about "What You See Is What You Get" is that you have to define 'where you get it'. You have to define 'it'. The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc. It sounds like RMS means his desktop/laptop computer. On the upside, you have a user archetype: Richard Stallman. A good product manager would start building up a lis…

>The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc.

Not since more than a decade ago, when we started using the same rendering infrastructure (e.g Display Postscript, Quartz, Cairo, what Windows uses etc) for both print and display.

In fact nowadays, with hidpi (retina) displays, you even get similar resolution between the average print and monitor.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#13

Post by jadyoyster »

daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

C-x C-+ increases font size, C-x C-- decreases font size if that's what you were looking for.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#14

Post by chaz »

adamnemecek wrote: post #10

Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_degree

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation in the field of Information Technology, has been awarded nine honorary doctorates from various international educational institutions from 1996 through 2011 including the North American Lakehead University in 2009, and now refers to himself as "Dr. Richard Stallman" in speeches, talks, videos and email.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#15

Post by gcv »

daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

Try this:

    (defun set-font (font-family height)
      (interactive "sFont family: \nnHeight: ")
      (set-face-attribute 'default nil :family font-family :height height)
      (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'unicode font-family))
Then, if you have the right font installed, the following will work:

    (set-font "Monaco" 140) ; for 14-pt Monaco
or, e.g.,

    (set-font "Anonymous" 120) ; for 12-pt Anonymous
(M-x set-font also works.)

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#17

Post by daleharvey »

jadyoyster wrote: post #13
daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

C-x C-+ increases font size, C-x C-- decreases font size if that's what you were looking for.

Heh C-+ / C-- actually work, at least in my emacsforosx, have no idea when that started working, but nice, one complaint off my list, but its not hard to imagine many more to make emacs more user friendly

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#18

Post by hollerith »

daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

It's got a very nice way of handling text size and other text "attributes". All the various kinds ("faces") of text are arranged in an inheritance hierarchy, so a change in the size of the text in the base of the hierarchy propagates to all of the text in the application (minus the size of the text in the title bar, which is of course controlled by the operating system).

So for example, to make all Emacs text (except the title-bar text) pretty darn big, you just eval the following:

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 200)

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#19

Post by pseut »

daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

> However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in.

Ah, you must have never tried vim. :)

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#20

Post by Figs »

daleharvey wrote: post #9

I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet. However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in. It would be kinda nice to see people work on t…

> I am fairly determined to use web based applications only

That sounds really unpleasant to me. Why on earth would you want to do that?

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