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

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31–40 of 186 posts

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

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I likely dont think the things you relate to web software being unpleasant are inherent to the actual platform and can be fixed, both by 3rd parties producing better web based software and by the platforms themselves being fixed. That combined with the advantages of having a single, cross platform runtime platform that is shared as opposed to owned as being too important to ignore, I think its silly that peop…

My biggest issue with web apps is that I don't have control of the software -- someone else can unilaterally decide to change the interface or functionality from day to day. (GMail is an example of a case that regularly irritates me by doing this.) While I appreciate what you're saying about a common, open runtime being valuable -- I've considered using a self-contained, special purpose browser as the GUI for a proje…

Seems like Firefox OS' packaged web apps (shipped as a zip file) solves those issues without losing the common runtime benefits.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Publishing/Packaged...

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

#32
post #22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

I have a couple HTML documents open on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. All three look different. I opened a couple of eBooks on Kindle and iBooks on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. All three look different. All three use Display Postscript, CoreGraphics and Quartz. All three look different. WYSIWG depends on where. I don't own a printer, but I bet if I printed from all three devices all three documents would look differe…

It's because you're not looking at the data in a WYSIWYG environment. If I take an Acrobat document or MS Word document, print it, and look it next to my screen, I'd expect the layout and 'look' to be perfectly identical (barring blurriness due to one-or-others resolution limitations)

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

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Note that these keys zoom, they don't change the font size. Useful for displaying, not useful if you're looking to export or print text.

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

#34

Quick! Someone add emacs bindings to MS Word, change the styling a little bit, and we can get Stallman to unknowingly be using the devil's software :)

The first part's done, at least: http://sourceforge.net/projects/womacs/

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

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I likely dont think the things you relate to web software being unpleasant are inherent to the actual platform and can be fixed, both by 3rd parties producing better web based software and by the platforms themselves being fixed. That combined with the advantages of having a single, cross platform runtime platform that is shared as opposed to owned as being too important to ignore, I think its silly that peop…

My biggest issue with web apps is that I don't have control of the software -- someone else can unilaterally decide to change the interface or functionality from day to day. (GMail is an example of a case that regularly irritates me by doing this.) While I appreciate what you're saying about a common, open runtime being valuable -- I've considered using a self-contained, special purpose browser as the GUI for a proje…

Thats exactly what I meant by something that is not inherent to the platform, The example I used (brackets) is an application built primarily using web technologies that isnt served from a website / you have complete control over.

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

#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 him to know something he has no use for, but he should know the most popular components in the Emacs ecosystem. Org mode is one of the only reasons I started using Emacs.

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

#37
post #14

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.

Um. Wow.

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

#38

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?

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this:

  > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software."
You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

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

#40
post #14

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.

In that case it would be more appropriate to use "Dr.h.c. Richard Stallman".
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