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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

#141

Post by eropple »

rimantas wrote: post #115
terhechte wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom, in Stallmans words, is not meant to be 'free as in beer' (like free skype calls). Instead he refers to the freedom to read, modify, understand, and ultimately choose everything about the software that you use. I.e. be able to answer these questions (say about Skype): - Is any communication not properly encrypted - Is your communication being spied on / being recorded - Is there a way to add feature "x" to th…

That's just stupid dream not utopist. Having access to source code would me absolutely nothing, unless you are willing to check the actual code installed on the each system involved in communication chain. Back to the point: Skype does not give me some freedom, fine. But it denies zero freedoms too.

> But it denies zero freedoms too.

By their philosophy, it does. If that feels hand-wavey to you I would agree; I find the whole "define 'freedom' as 'things I want'" thing more than a little sneaky--but it is consistent with the rest of their philosophy.

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

#142

Post by ginko »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #47
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…

What about TeXmacs [1]? I'm not a heavy emacs or (La)TeX user, but when I tried it it felt amazing, with the best of both worlds. [1] http://www.texmacs.org

I was about to suggest this.

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

#143

Post by peatmoss »

jes wrote: post #124
peatmoss wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I end up just using LaTeX (with memoir class) most of the time, I've always thought LyX hit a sweet spot between strict enforcement of document structure and forcing people to write markup. For the life of me, I can't figure out why LyX doesn't exist as a collaborative google docs style web app.

I like writelatex.com lately.

Still has the problem of needing to talk collaborators, advisors, and other folk into learning LaTeX. In the alternate reality of my dreams, all people that I work with in an academic environment would write LaTeX and collaborate via GitHub.

I've personally been thinking about some sort of GitHub, LyXified markdown browser plugin, in which collaborators' changes get committed to a separate git branch. Then I die a little inside and soldier on.

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

#144

Post by bowerbird »

Derbasti wrote: post #94

Quite simply, explicit markup makes it very easy to see what formatting will be applied to what text. WYSIWYG only shows you the end result, with no clean way to see how you got there. Was this font introduced because of some theme? Was it applied because of some toolbar button? Is it the result of some template? Was it copied from somewhere else, thereby baking someone else's theming into the copied text? These are…

i have read literally hundreds of threads discussing this general issue over the years, and i can say that this comment right here has come as close to the heart of the problem as any other one i've read in that time.

congratulations, derbasti, on your observational oxyopia.

-bowerbird

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

#146

Post by bjelkeman-again »

vorce wrote: post #66
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until something like Ekiga does multipart conference calls, a minimum of 10 nodes and more voice only, then it is hard for me to switch from something like Skype.

Me and my buddies recently switched from Skype to Mumble+IRC. Works great, I like this setup way better. The big downside is of course that it requires a server.

Yeah, I was discussing that with my colleagues the other day.

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

#147

Post by delluminatus »

terhechte wrote: post #93
reuven wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely believe it. First of all, Stallman isn't known for hiding his opinions, or masking his version of the truth. But beyond that, Stallman has often failed or refused to use technologies that the rest of us take for granted. Years ago, I spoke with him about a proposed bill in the US Congress that would have affected intellectual property laws. (I can't remember the specifics.) At some point, Stallman, who h…

Yes, he doesn't surf the web: "I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page dire…

Is this purely for anonymity purposes, as he seems to imply? It seems like quite the workflow when a (relatively) modern anonymity tool like Tor would probably be fine.

I wonder if it's deliberately complex to discourage easy, shallow browsing, or if he has some other rationale.

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

#149

Post by agumonkey »

gexla wrote: post #36

> I don't know how to use Org mode, and don't know what it does (it seems to do so many things), but if it displays through Emacs then there are many formatting features that it can't display in a WYSIWYG fashion like Libre Office. I can't believe Stallman doesn't know how to use Org mode. If he is interested in selling people on Emacs, then Org mode is one of the killer features for the presentation. I don't expect…

I've seen Programming teachers requiring emacs for a course while not using anything it has to offer, not even as a programmable editor, and even displaying signs of anti-abstraction (no regularity in actions for a sequence of identical text modification tasks).

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

#150

Post by gcr »

dcalacci wrote: post #101
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…

>So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist So org-mode has you covered there, basically. Org isn't markdown, but it's close (and full of tons of note-taking features), and you can do inline latex with live preview in org-mode. I use it for notes all the time.

> inline latex with live preview in org-mode

This certainly isn't the default. Could you elaborate more on how you set this up?

Edit: Found my answer. M-x org-preview-latex-fragment, which is bound to C-c C-x C-l.

Edit 2: Hey look, you can get tikz working! Evaluate or add this to your .emacs:

    (add-to-list 'org-latex-packages-alist '("" "tikz" t))
    (setq org-latex-create-formula-image-program 'imagemagick)
Then, type the following into an Org-mode document and press C-c C-x C-l:

    \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.1]
    \draw[fill=green] (3,0) circle (9);
    \draw[fill=orange] (1,0) circle (5);
    \draw[fill=blue] (0,0) circle (3);
\end{tikzpicture}
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