171–180 of 186 posts
I've always felt it was this kind of thinking that puts Emacs at odds with the UNIX philosophy of do one thing well . Unless your one thing is everything-you-can-do-with-text.
Is this as staggeringly naive as it looks? Some of the people responding are steering the discussion to a layout language with a preview window. I don't know if they are doing it because they prefer to work in such a user-hostile mode (I did this for a book, in Eclipse. Ugh.), or if they think this is a more sane goal. WYSIWYG has its own issues. most users of word processors have no idea that paragraphs are objects…
For now, I have edited and generated them with reStructured Text, but the workflow is not entirely satisfactory (and I don't feel like dipping into python to improve things there, I would rather write rst document preprocessors in lisp when possible).
Another aspect is that if we improve the graphic abilities of emacs, it may be easier and faster to implement chrome like lighttable to attract newbies. Sublime Text probably has capted a percentage of users who would have chosen emacs, if it could have competed in the esthetic plane. Also, it is a little regretable to be limited to ascii art for the few diagrams that are sometimes needed in the documentations we write as programmers. If we could edit vectorial graphics in emacs, it would be great (we can already render svg, but perhaps thru an external program).
So I would not say naive, but on the contrary, it may condensate a critical mass of itches to motivate some scratches.
I wonder what is preventing Stallman from doing it himself? It is, after all, open source.
Why don't we have both: a WYSIWYG Designer, and a Source code editor? That way you get productive immediately with the designer, yet still have the power to fine-tune every detail using the text editor.
You mean like Oxygen, just to mention one of them? http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/WYSIWYG_Editors.html There are quite a few products already, for those willing to pay for the software they use.
This is the epitome of the challenge of open source. RMS whines : "25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing. That is why we added text properties and variable width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this. Could people please start working on the features that are needed?" And he's 100% accurate, it has been 25 years, and there is an open source WYSIWYG word proce…
> called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. If you bothered to read the mail thread, you would see that RMS answer that specific question. The answer he gave was that Libre Officer do not have the multi-buffer system of emacs, and the core design is not made to be a lisp interpreter. As such, adding emacs like features to libre office would unlikely work effectively in the libre office project. I…
It would be easier and less work to modify Emacs to do WYSIWYG than to add Emacs work flow and features to LibreOffice.
I'd suggest that you're vastly underestimating what would be involved in "doing WYSIWYG" to a sufficient degree that Emacs would actually be useful as a word processor to people who are not already dedicated Emacs users. I did read the mail thread, and it's pretty clear to me that a lot of the folks there -- and I do not mean to take away from their brilliance by saying this -- don't have a blinking clue what a full-featured word processor is capable of.
The reason that this hasn't been done, I suspect, is that the intersection of users for whom WYSIWYG is important and for whom having Emacs-ish features is important is virtually nil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. If you bothered to read the mail thread, you would see that RMS answer that specific question. The answer he gave was that Libre Officer do not have the multi-buffer system of emacs, and the core design is not made to be a lisp interpreter. As such, adding emacs like features to libre office would unlikely work effectively in the libre office project. I…
I don't see how what you just quoted contradicts Chuck's "[Libre Office] isn't what RMS wants" post. Libre Office is a free software WYSIWYG word processor with an extremely powerful feature set. But it isn't what RMS wants, because it doesn't have some things Emacs does. It would be easier and less work to modify Emacs to do WYSIWYG than to add Emacs work flow and features to LibreOffice. I'd suggest that you're vas…
We know from inspection the value is at least 1.0 (RMS).
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 prefer the paradigm where you edit in something like markdown but the live preview is available on the right hand side or down below the text. All it needs is a catchy acronym. The controls for the text should be immediate in the text, that makes sense and is the most powerful implementation. But you have to see what it all means and be able to identify problems along the way when you make a mistake & know what you…
However, there could be a performance problem. Font setting and layout in Latex is markedly superior to, say, web browsers or Word. But Latex often takes several seconds to lay stuff out. Then again, Indesign can do it, so it should be possible in general.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. If you bothered to read the mail thread, you would see that RMS answer that specific question. The answer he gave was that Libre Officer do not have the multi-buffer system of emacs, and the core design is not made to be a lisp interpreter. As such, adding emacs like features to libre office would unlikely work effectively in the libre office project. I…
I don't see how what you just quoted contradicts Chuck's "[Libre Office] isn't what RMS wants" post. Libre Office is a free software WYSIWYG word processor with an extremely powerful feature set. But it isn't what RMS wants, because it doesn't have some things Emacs does. It would be easier and less work to modify Emacs to do WYSIWYG than to add Emacs work flow and features to LibreOffice. I'd suggest that you're vas…
It is not that RMS simply want his tool of choice, but rather tool that has the work flow and features he needs. Its like someone comming from git, and wanting that workflow in cvs. Its not the name or code base of the program that matter. Chuck's post however implies NIH and a stubbornness in using other peoples tools, rather than a need for a specific work flow and feature sets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean like Oxygen, just to mention one of them? http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/WYSIWYG_Editors.html There are quite a few products already, for those willing to pay for the software they use.
Seems nice, but it is not freedom software. But I would move to use this docbook, ie xml and xsl as external file formatd for an emacs word processor.
I use a lot of FOSS software, but I never put religion over convenience.
Plus, as someone that earns money selling software developer skills, I tend to look down to companies using FOSS software as free beer.