reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (12/01/85)
In article <731@othervax.UUCP> ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) writes: >Tex, and the current UNIX tools for typeset text preparation, are >rapidly becoming dinosaurs - they probably have already become so. >Visible typography commands embedded in text, and separate H & J/page >makeup runs are passe BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are talking about. Anything where the structure is as important as the content. Cookbooks like the @i[Joy of Cooking]. Encyclopedias. Airline schedules. Dictionaries. Reference manuals for computer software. Interactive systems are just fine for small documents, and for documents whose appearance is extremely important with respect to their content. They are not OK for large documents. Whether or not interactive systems will EVER be ok for this kind of material is an open research topic. My own belief is that it is possible to build an interactive system that does not throw away all of the extra capability that the batch systems give you right now. However, as long as the interactive text formatting programs are being programmed by people who think that interactive systems are inherently better, there is no danger of them becoming better. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (12/03/85)
> In article <731@othervax.UUCP> ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) writes: > >Tex, and the current UNIX tools for typeset text preparation, are > >rapidly becoming dinosaurs - they probably have already become so. > >Visible typography commands embedded in text, and separate H & J/page > >makeup runs are passe > In article <1861@glacier.ARPA>, reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes: > BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use > embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that > cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are > talking about. Anything where the structure is as important as the content. > Cookbooks like the @i[Joy of Cooking]. Encyclopedias. Airline schedules. > Dictionaries. Reference manuals for computer software. This would perhaps be more convincing had the author not written an embedded command text formatting program. From my limited experience dealing with "computer novices" in the graphic arts -- who do not refer to us as "graphic-arts novices," though they could -- the latest and best professional typographic systems contain as many WYSIWYG functions as the programmers can cram in. These SPECIFICALLY include the ability to box and columnarize text in tabular formats, as in cookbooks, encyclopedias, airline schedules, dictionaries, directories, etc. The ability to do ruled forms in a WYSIWYG manner is considered essential. Incidentally, they do not call laser printer output "typeset material." The discernable resolution and poor kerning is still too crude, in their opinion. To us computer types, used to crummy dot-matrix output, it looks great. To the professional typographer, the one with the 20X loupe magnifier in his shirt pocket, it is simply amusing. -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU
reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (12/03/85)
If you look at the interaction of technology and industry for the past few hundred years, you will see a recurring theme. A new technology gets invented. The in-place industry applies that technology to automate what they are currently doing. This is often inefficient, as the new technology is often better applied by changing the fundamental premises of the industry. Gradually new companies grow up, which use the new technology in a different way, and if it is more cost-effective, then the new industry drives the old one out of business. The "obvious" application of computer technology to the graphic arts industry is to give them computer systems that mimic the way they have been doing business--wysiwyg systems. Naturally they will prefer this. A non-obvious approach is to eliminate the graphic arts industry, applying the new technology to make 80% of its work force redundant. Then it doesn't matter what they think. I claim that, for a wide range of publications, the traditional graphic-arts industry approach of cutting, pasting, and wysiwyg systems simply cannot be competitive with more software-intensive approaches such as embedded-command systems. You will be trading one programmer for 4 graphic artists. At the moment we are in a transition phase. The graphic arts industry is discovering computers, and they are molding them in their own image, taking the things that they have done by hand since the invention of cold type and putting them isomorphically onto the computer. Simultaneously, however, thousands of businesses are discovering that they don't NEED the graphic arts industry. With simple computer tools they can achieve their end results--the publication of books or newsletters or catalogs--without graphic artists. If history serves as any guide, then in half a generation the traditionalist approach will no longer be competitive and will have to pull out of those markets completely. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA
jjhnsn@ut-dillo.UUCP (James Johnson) (12/03/85)
> the latest and best professional typographic systems contain as many > WYSIWYG functions as the programmers can cram in. These SPECIFICALLY include > the ability to box and columnarize text in tabular formats, as in cookbooks, Ed, could you be more specific about which typographic systems you're referring to? The systems I have seen more resemble previewing systems than WYSIWYG systems. I don't think there are many professional typographic systems that rival TeX and troff for power. Admittedly, the results of TeX and troff are not of "graphics arts quality". It's true that graphic arts and typesetting professionals have high demands, but the methods they use are pretty primative (not crude, but low-level). > From my limited experience dealing with "computer novices" in the graphic > arts -- who do not refer to us as "graphic-arts novices," though they could -- I doubt that computer people are more elitist than graphics arts people. I suspect that we don't even rate as novices in the opinion of many graphics arts professionals. > This would perhaps be more convincing had the author not written an embedded > command text formatting program. I am sure he would rather have an interactive WYSIWYG system, if it would do what he wants with resonable speed. -- James Lee Johnson, U.T. Computation Center, Austin, Texas 78712 ARPA: jjhnsn@ut-ngp.UTEXAS.EDU UUCP: ihnp4!ut-ngp!jjhnsn allegra!ut-ngp!jjhnsn gatech!ut-ngp!jjhnsn seismo!ut-sally!jjhnsn harvard!ut-sally!jjhnsn
rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (12/04/85)
From Ed Nather: > In article <1861@glacier.ARPA>, reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes: > > BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use > > embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that > > cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are > > talking about... > ... > This would perhaps be more convincing had the author not written an embedded > command text formatting program. I find it quite the contrary. Brian's position certainly carries the weight of both his experience and his convictions. What's wrong with someone who believes in embedded-command systems writing an embedded- command system? (You want he should write a wysiwyg system???) -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Reality? Gad, that's worse than puberty!
carl@bdaemon.UUCP (carl) (12/04/85)
> In article <731@othervax.UUCP> ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) writes: > >Tex, and the current UNIX tools for typeset text preparation, are > >rapidly becoming dinosaurs - they probably have already become so. > >Visible typography commands embedded in text, and separate H & J/page > >makeup runs are passe > > BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use > embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that > cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are > talking about. ... etc. etc ..... In support of Brian's contention, could anyone point me (us) to a WYSIWG tool that will produce the table on page 17 of Lesk's 'tbl' paper? Carl Brandauer
robert@fear.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (12/05/85)
In article <1919@glacier.ARPA>, reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes: > I claim that, for a wide range of publications, the traditional graphic-arts > industry approach of cutting, pasting, and wysiwyg systems simply cannot be > competitive with more software-intensive approaches such as embedded-command > systems. You will be trading one programmer for 4 graphic artists. > [...] > Simultaneously, however, > thousands of businesses are discovering that they don't NEED the graphic > arts industry. With simple computer tools they can achieve their end > results--the publication of books or newsletters or catalogs--without > graphic artists. It's true that any idiot can now put together an ugly book, an incompetently-laid-out newsletter, or a shoddy catalog with the use of computer tools. Most of us have probably seen what happens when people with no concept of layout start using Macs with laser printers -- garish, ugly, and ultimately ineffective copy. While competent layout isn't all THAT difficult, it helps to have it done by someone who knows what he's doing. Most programmers can't even write, let alone take words and pictures and do something useful with them. The graphics art industry will remain alive and well, because there's more to the business than mechanical cutting and pasting. -- Robert Plamondon UUCP: {turtlevax, resonex, cae780}!weitek!robert FidoNet: 10/624 robert plamondon
jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson) (12/06/85)
In article <338@bdaemon.UUCP> carl@bdaemon.UUCP (carl) writes: >In support of Brian's contention, could anyone point me (us) to a WYSIWG >tool that will produce the table on page 17 of Lesk's 'tbl' paper? > >Carl Brandauer See Beach, Richard J., @b[Setting Tables and Illustrations with Style]. PhD. Dissertation, University of Waterloo, 1985. Beach describes his work at Xerox PARC extending wysiwyg systems (Tioga) to support more graphical style attributes, and in particular to support composition of complex tables. I don't know how to obtain a copy of the thesis, I'm afraid; maybe U. Microfilms or mail to U. of Waterloo Dept. of Computer Science. The particular system isn't wildly impressive, though it does handle the Lesk example. But Beach has good general discussion and references.
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (12/07/85)
> BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use > embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that > cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are > talking about. Anything where the structure is as important as the content. > Cookbooks like the @i[Joy of Cooking]. Encyclopedias. Airline schedules. > Dictionaries. Reference manuals for computer software. > > Interactive systems are just fine for small documents, and for documents > whose appearance is extremely important with respect to their content. They > are not OK for large documents. Well, I dunno about the other categories (all of which have somewhat specialized format requirements), but when I was at CCI we did all the reference manuals for our Office Power computer software on a WYSIWYG system. They were definitely large documents. I won't say one way or the other whether they were "done well" or not. I certainly found it infinitely nicer to work with that system than with "[n/t]roff" and its symbiotes. (I've not worked with TeX, or with Scribe; from reading TeX Scribe writeups and manuals, it seems like a lot of the sheer unmitigated pain of working with "[n/t]roff" et cie. may not be present with those systems.) However, from other messages in this sequence it seems I must state whether I've written any software of one or the other sort. Very well - I originally wrote the WYSIWYG system that we used at CCI (which makes it not too surprising that I'd like it). > Whether or not interactive systems will EVER be ok for this kind of material > is an open research topic. My own belief is that it is possible to build an > interactive system that does not throw away all of the extra capability that > the batch systems give you right now. However, as long as the interactive > text formatting programs are being programmed by people who think that > interactive systems are inherently better, there is no danger of them > becoming better. I tend to agree with you on this. (However, if a paragraph formatting algorithm like TeX's, rather than the traditional "greedy algorithm" is used, it may be WYSIWYG but What You See may not be What You Edit - it may be better to have something like IBM's Janus system, where you edit on a screen which displays text with embedded markup and view on another screen; if the whole paragraph changes, rather than just the current line and lines below (and occasionally one above) the current line, you may risk going blind if you don't keep strictly to the Eyes On The Copy rule). If the "JATO-assisted-typewriter" model that a number of word processors is taken as the way such editors should be, there is, indeed, no danger of those systems being completely superior for large documents. The Interleaf system seems to be a step in the right direction, as it treats the document as being made up of objects with certain "properties" (or "styles" or "environments", depending on what term you use), rather than just being a string of characters. Guy Harris
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (12/07/85)
> I claim that, for a wide range of publications, the traditional graphic-arts > industry approach of cutting, pasting, and wysiwyg systems simply cannot be > competitive with more software-intensive approaches such as embedded-command > systems. You will be trading one programmer for 4 graphic artists. What do you mean by "software-intensive" in this case? Are you referring to the embedded-command system as "software", or the embedded *commands* as software? (I.e., does the programmer in question work for the graphic-arts company or the company that makes the machines they, or their clients, use?) I agree that a system which merely computerizes the manual labor of pasteup, etc. isn't the way to go. However, I don't agree (and neither do you, I assume, given your earlier statement that interactive systems *could* do "automatic pasteup", etc. as well as an embedded-command system, even if nobody ends up actually *making* such a system) that an embedded-command system is the only alternative to such a system. Given the choice between a "JATO-assisted typewriter"-style WYSIWYG editor, and an embedded-command system, it's not clear that the WYSIWYG editor is the superior choice; however, given the choice between Interleaf and "full-frontal 'troff'", I'd take Interleaf any day (*ceteris paribus*; machines which run Interleaf are a bit expensive, which may be just as well as every such machine bought from Sun helps support my somewhat profligate lifestyle :-)). (Then again, why is the author of Scribe referring to them as "embedded-COMMAND" systems rather than "embedded-markup" systems? I thought the whole point of systems like Scribe - or Interleaf - was that you didn't have to "sweat the details"; you could let the DBA do the grunge work...) Guy Harris
rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) (12/08/85)
In article <1919@glacier.ARPA> reid@glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid) writes: > >If you look at the interaction of technology and industry for the past few >hundred years, you will see a recurring theme. A new technology gets >invented. The in-place industry applies that technology to automate what >they are currently doing. This is often inefficient, as the new technology >is often better applied by changing the fundamental premises of the >industry. Gradually new companies grow up, which use the new technology in a >different way, and if it is more cost-effective, then the new industry >drives the old one out of business. > ... > >At the moment we are in a transition phase. The graphic arts industry is >discovering computers, and they are molding them in their own image, taking >the things that they have done by hand since the invention of cold type and >putting them isomorphically onto the computer. Simultaneously, however, >thousands of businesses are discovering that they don't NEED the graphic >arts industry. With simple computer tools they can achieve their end >results--the publication of books or newsletters or catalogs--without >graphic artists. If history serves as any guide, then in half a generation >the traditionalist approach will no longer be competitive and will have to >pull out of those markets completely. Brian is absolutely right that new technology tends to replace older industry, and does this by delivering cheaper products. The operative word, however, is "cheaper", not "better". Sad to say, cheaper usually also means worse. The new technology survives because (1) it's usually only slightly worse, and so most people don't care, (2) capitalism works well with mass markets, since by definition the average customer is not as demanding as the more discerning customer, and (3) eventually people get acclimated and no one remembers the advantages offered by the older (higher priced) product. [Incidental note: the new technology may also offer other advantages, such as smaller size or weight. Again, these are engineering improvements and do not directly relate to the quality of the final product (it being understood that the product is *produced* by the technology, the technology is not the product itself).] This is exactly what we see with document processing systems and technical typesetters. Pick up a copy of Ullman's book on Databases, typeset with TeX. The typesetting is inexcusably bad! (The standard TeX fonts are also terrible, but that doesn't affect the typesetting.) Why then was TeX used, rather than a conventional typesetting? Almost certainly it was to lower the cost of producing the book, with the attitude that TeX output was "good enough". (I have heard that Don Knuth developed TeX in response to his publisher's statement that re-typesetting second editions of Knuth's books would be too expensive. I believe this to be true, but I cannot remember the source.) By the way, don't take my word for it; get Ullman's book and try reading two consecutive chapters. Don't just skim them (I suspect you will find yourself wanting to do this, because of the subconcious resistance to the bad typesetting), but make yourself read and try to digest the book as a text. Measure the results by how you respond to the material in the book, and how little you were bothered by the typesetting. (In a perfectly typeset book the typesetting completely disappears, so that it is never noticed by itself.) Of course it is not fair to judge a typesetter by only one of its uses. Look around. Almost all of the documents (books, papers) I have read that were typeset with TeX are awful. If this is the future of technical typesetting, I don't want it -- and it doesn't matter whether it was done with TeX, Scribe, WYSIWYG, or chiseling stone tablets. Rather than continue in the style of a debate, let's look at the good points of each of the two approaches. WYSIWYG is good at: local things (i.e., a screenfuls worth) appearance user feedback Text processors are good at: document structure textual computation (referencing, indexing, etc.) preserving intention I see no contradiction in integrating both sets of good points into one system. What we lack is a good language to express both sets of things conveniently. What the WYSIWYG people (I confess I am in this camp) ought to be doing is trying to find out how to incorporate the good features of text processors into interactive systems. That way we wouldn't need those document processors (to be fair, we wouldn't need any of the existing WYSIWYG systems either), and we could all go on to more entertaining and more productive discussions.
reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (12/08/85)
In article <705@unc.unc.UUCP> rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) writes: >This is exactly what we see with document processing systems and >technical typesetters. Pick up a copy of Ullman's book on >Databases, typeset with TeX. The typesetting is inexcusably bad! Actually, the typesetting isn't all THAT bad. What is inexcusably bad, at least in my copy of that book, is the type imaging and printing. The pages are fuzzy. Most of this is a failure of the printer when making lithographic plates. Some of it is the design of the type face. Neither of those has anything to do with TeX, save that TeX only knows how to work with its own type faces. >Of course it is not fair to judge a typesetter by only one of its >uses. Look around. Almost all of the documents (books, papers) I >have read that were typeset with TeX are awful. If this is the >future of technical typesetting, I don't want it -- and it doesn't >matter whether it was done with TeX, Scribe, WYSIWYG, or chiseling >stone tablets. You are right that most of what is done with TeX is ugly, but the reason for this has nothing to do with TeX. It has to do with the aesthetic sense of the person using TeX. Systems like TeX give the author too much control over the appearance of the document, and if the author misuses that control the resulting document is ugly. I would like to offer up the new Addison-Wesley PostScript reference manual as an example of an attractive book typeset in Scribe. The reason it is attractive is that its appearance was specified by a professional graphic designer and not by a programmer. WYSIWYG systems give the user even more control over the appearance than TeX does--with the concomitant possibility of even more abuse of that control. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA
trickey@alice.UucP (Howard Trickey) (12/08/85)
Please don't judge TeX by the Ullman Database book. One problem is that it was set with TeX78, the predecessor to the current TeX (so, as I pointed out in net.internat, the hyphenation algorithm isn't the Liang one). And it uses older Computer Modern fonts. Knuth has just finished a complete touch-up of Computer Modern, and well-known font designers have participated, resulting in "much improvement", in their opinion. But the biggest problem is that full-frontal TeX leaves too many graphic design choices to the writer. Ullman just mimiced the style he was used to with troff -ms. Knuth recognizes the need for competent book designers, and used one to design "The TeXbook". That is probably the best example of the use of TeX available in bookstores, though it too used the old fonts. For the average user, the expense and bother of hiring a designer means that it won't be done. There, a system like LaTeX should be used. That is a Scribe-like interface to TeX designed by Leslie Lamport, and as in Scribe, the user is supposed to describe only the logical structure of the document, leaving it up to expert "design-style writers" to make the graphic-design decisions. Lamport had some help from book design experts in making up his default styles, though the world would be enriched if more design styles vetted by book designers made it into the LaTeX library. The LaTeX manual published by Addison-Wesley is an example of its use. I don't think it is totally successful, since the examples are laid out two-columm (input|output) with a resulting distracting changes of margin size. As for the debate about WYSIWYG: I agree with those who say that it is possible to build a WYSIWYG system with the logical description capabilities of LaTeX or Scribe, but we aren't there yet and until we are, I'll stick with LaTeX. Interleaf is almost there, but the current lack of (1) automatic numbering of things and the ability to symbolically cross-reference; and (2) decent math setting, is fatal. Also, the nicities like inter-character kerning and by-paragraph line breaking that Tex provides were not there the last time I looked. I haven't looked at whether it is possible to add one's own logical structuring categories to Interleaf, but it better damn well be possible. Seeing what you're getting is mainly important to the extent that you are doing the graphic design yourself, since you want immediate feedback as to whether you made the right choice. With a system where the user isn't supposed to make such decisions (and, as I just argued, naive users shouldn't), the ability to see stuff immediately is a sort of instant gratification that falls mainly in the category of frill. Unfortunately, this isn't quite true, since the user still might want to reword things to avoid bad line and page breaks. Knuth would spend several such rewording passes when doing chapters for his books, and he would have appreciated a system that would try to keep up with previewing his document in one window as he edited in another. But he didn't feel the need for seeing how the font changes or math would turn out --- one quickly learns from experience what to expect. Maybe one of these days I'll do such a two-window TeX system. I think the need for massive computing power can be minimized by keeping a sort of intermediate form of the document around from previous runs, and checksums of the "environment" at various points. Howard Trickey, At&T Bell Labs research!trickey
eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (12/09/85)
> . . . but there is a large class of documents that > cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are > talking about. Anything where the structure is as important as the content. > Cookbooks like the @i[Joy of Cooking]. Encyclopedias. Airline schedules. > Dictionaries. Reference manuals for computer software. > . . . > Interactive systems are just fine for small documents, and for documents > whose appearance is extremely important with respect to their content. They > are not OK for large documents. > . . . > Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid > Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA Brian! You surprise me! I thought you had more foresight than that. Where's all that PARC money to SU gone? I think this harkens to the proposal some one made two years ago for something to follow on troff and TeX. Frankly, my opinion is to make something with at least pseudo See-what-you-get. This "assembly formatter" approach be-speaks of of some batch oriented thinking. Sure, computers aren't powerful enough yet.... That's never been an excuse to stop people from using computers. Your comment about structure really shook me. There have been numerous times where sequential/alphabetic structure has never helped me. This is where I think that computing gives greater power over hardcopy documentation. I suggest reading "Sciences of the Artificial" again by you know who (CMU days). While I fully appreciate the fact that the WYSIWYG is not perfect: equations, tables, and so forth, I don't think this is an excuse to perpetuate assembly language macros in text processing. From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene emiya@ames-vmsb.ARPA
trickey@alice.UucP (Howard Trickey) (12/09/85)
Brian Reid wrote that TeX only knows how to deal with its own typefaces. That's usually true in practice, but it is possible to make TeX work with other ones. I've just finished making a "TaTeX": LaTeX using Times Roman instead of Computer Modern. The hard part is making up TeX font description files (tfm's) with the information TeX wants for kerning, accent placement, and ligatures. I could also use any number of other typefaces (Palatino looks nice), but then I'd lose some accents or have to load other fonts just for accents. Howard Trickey, AT&T Bell Labs research!trickey
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (12/09/85)
In article <2168@glacier.ARPA>, reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes: > You are right that most of what is done with TeX is ugly, but the reason for > this has nothing to do with TeX. It has to do with the aesthetic sense of > the person using TeX. Systems like TeX give the author too much control over > the appearance of the document, and if the author misuses that control the > resulting document is ugly. > [ ... ] > WYSIWYG systems give the user even more control over the appearance than TeX > does--with the concomitant possibility of even more abuse of that control. > Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid While I agree that ugliness often lies in an underdeveloped sense of style, I can't agree with Brian's solution, as exemplified by the Scribe text formatter: don't let the user get at the machinery because he'll muck it up. This attitude assumes the user is a dolt and may be fine if he is, but it is thoroughly frustrating to someone who has (or thinks he has) a reasonable aesthetic sense of typography and is unable to get exactly what he wants. To be fair, the Scribe manual warns you by suggesting if you can't get just what you want you're being to fussy. Maybe so ... I quit using Scribe some time ago because I couldn't get exactly what I want. Many other people disagree with me locally, so I am in a minority. *sigh* But it's not clear to me you can't have a system that allows the user to specify, in a general way, what he's after, and still permit him to reach under the hood and twiddle if he's willing to learn how. Since many people are happy with the formatting options Scribe provides, they will have no interest in exploring the underlying machinery, and the "canned aesthetics" provided may well be better than they could do for themselves. But if they feel they can bend the result nearer their heart's desire, and are willing to learn how, I don't think they should be prevented from doing so ... and they might even learn a bit more about typographic taste in the process. -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU
mikem@uwstat.UUCP (12/09/85)
I waited a while and unless I missed it, nobady seems to have mentioned my
PRIMARY reason for a wysiwyg system ; TECHNICAL symbols (in my case
mathematical equations, but other special symbols are just as important).
What I would like is a system which allowed me some overall control of
the style (like SCRIBE does, or even like troff), but lets me SEE the
FORMULA's (and maybe rough layout) as I type them. Anyone who has worked with
eqn or TeX knows how hard it is to get the equations correct.
--
Mike Meyer -- Phone +1 (608) 262-1157 (Leave messages at 262-2598)
ARPA: mikem@stat.wisc.edu (used to be mikem@wisc-stat.arpa )
UUCP: ...!{allegra,ihnp4,seismo,harvard,topaz,caip,ucbvax,
pyrchi,heurikon}!uwvax!uwstat!mikemmash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey) (12/10/85)
Ed Nather writes: > While I agree that ugliness often lies in an underdeveloped sense of style, > I can't agree with Brian's solution, as exemplified by the Scribe text > formatter: don't let the user get at the machinery because he'll muck it up. >... > > But it's not clear to me you can't have a system that allows the user to > specify, in a general way, what he's after, and still permit him to reach > under the hood and twiddle if he's willing to learn how. Since many ... This is something we tried to do with the old -MM macros, but it always seems that for any given technology, you reach a point where it is very hard to maintain the extensibility without severe performance penalities, or without incredible complexification. This seems to be a fundamental design problem: how do you build systems that are easy to learn, give people a lot of leverage, and whose modification costs rise linearly as you depart from the defaults, and which can still be modified to reach a long distance away from those defaults. For example: raw troff lets you do anything, but nothing is simple. troff + (good macro package) lets you do many things easily, sometimes with serious perforamnce cost. Certain extensions are easily done, but with others, you fall off the edge of the world, and need to start from scratch. -- -john mashey UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!mash DDD: 415-960-1200 USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 1330 Charleston Rd, Mtn View, CA 94043
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (12/11/85)
> Incidentally, they do not call laser printer output "typeset material." The > discernable resolution and poor kerning is still too crude, in their opinion. > To us computer types, used to crummy dot-matrix output, it looks great. To > the professional typographer, the one with the 20X loupe magnifier in his > shirt pocket, it is simply amusing. To those of us who read text *without* using a 20X loupe magnifier, this manic concern with how text looks when a page is blown up to the size of a football field is simply amusing. Yes, I'm aware that readability can be affected by subtle issues, and that the 20X loupe can help you spot such problems, but professional typographers have a tendency to push this far beyond the point of diminishing returns. 300/inch laser printers will not replace typesetting machines, but they're going to steal a lot of the typesetting-machine market. Unless it is pointed out to them most explicitly, most users can see the difference only with poor fonts or difficult jobs. Which means that most users will accept 300/inch as adequate for most jobs. They don't feel that the increment of quality gained by going to real typesetting is worth the hassle and expense, barring the occasional job where maximum quality is an explicit objective. (Obviously I am talking about competently-"laserset" documents printed using good fonts, not about the typical output of MacWrite enthusiasts.) -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) (12/11/85)
In article <2168@glacier.ARPA> reid@glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid) writes: >You are right that most of what is done with TeX is ugly, but the reason for >this has nothing to do with TeX. It has to do with the aesthetic sense of >the person using TeX. Systems like TeX give the author too much control over >the appearance of the document, and if the author misuses that control the >resulting document is ugly. > >I would like to offer up the new Addison-Wesley PostScript reference manual >as an example of an attractive book typeset in Scribe. The reason it is >attractive is that its appearance was specified by a professional graphic >designer and not by a programmer. Brian is quite right to point this out. I have not looked at the book he mentions but think his argument is valid regardless. [To be fair to the other side I would have to say that I think it is just as easy to produce good documents as bad with a WYSIWYG system, but that in my experience it is always harder to produce good documents with a text processing system. Scribe seems better than TeX in this regard, but then I've never been a Scribe database administrator! :-) ] Furthermore this points out an item missing from my list comparing WYSIWYG's and Scribe-like systems. In particular, text processing systems generally are better at *cataloging* document structures so that the predefined structures can be retrieved rather than being re-written by everyone document hack under the sun. This is somewhat analogous to a subroutine library -- rather than reprogramming sin or some such <genericDeity>-awful function, we can just get it out of the library. So, you WYSIWYG'ers, add that to your task list! Our interactive systems should be able to catalogue and use document structures and templates as well as text processors do. But for the time being it is still true that WYSIWYG's are better for some things, text processors better for others. (Should I even bother to say I think that document structure and cataloging is best done graphically and interactively? :-) ) cheers, Tim
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell) (12/12/85)
In article <705@unc.unc.UUCP> rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) writes: > ...Pick up a copy of Ullman's book on >Databases, typeset with TeX. The typesetting is inexcusably bad! >...Why then was TeX used, rather than a conventional >typesetting? Almost certainly it was to lower the cost of producing >the book, with the attitude that TeX output was "good enough". > ...get Ullman's book and try >reading two consecutive chapters. Don't just skim them (I suspect >you will find yourself wanting to do this, because of the >subconcious resistance to the bad typesetting), but make yourself >read and try to digest the book as a text. Measure the results by >how you respond to the material in the book, and how little you were >bothered by the typesetting... I just looked at Ullman's book, and yes, it is bad typesetting (I would have thought it was the fault of the printers, but then I don't know much about such things). But I can put up with a *lot* of poor typesetting (or even typed text!) in a technical book if the price is right. In other words, I don't buy a technical book to enjoy the typefont; I buy it for the content. All the nice typesetting in the world won't turn sow's ears into silk purses. I guess I don't share your "subconcious resistance to the bad typesetting". I do have a resistance to bad content. Nice to have both, but if I have to choose, I know which I'd rather have... -- Mike Maxwell --What?! Credit my employer with my good ideas? No way! Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm
dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright) (12/13/85)
In article <259@uwstat.UUCP> mikem@uwstat.UUCP writes: >... my PRIMARY reason for a wysiwyg system ; TECHNICAL symbols (in my case >mathematical equations, but other special symbols are just as important). > ... Anyone who has worked with eqn or TeX knows how hard it is to > get the equations correct. Funny you should say that - I've just helped a colleague set a bit of fairly 'hairy' maths with TeX without much trouble, except for one diagram that just could not be done right in TeX - so we went to the trusty Mac, did it in MacDraw, and pasted it in. On the Mac - unlike TeX whick 'knows' about these things - the main problem was to get the equations shown on the diagram lined up and in suitable fonts (especially subscripts). Lines and shapes are MUCH easier on the Mac though. Conclusion? we need text setting systems that let the user draw what can be drawn but know enough about the context and rules for the information so that the system - not the user - can be responsible for the less creative part of the job like getting the right relative font sizes, positions, justification etc.. At present no one system does it all. I hope that when one does we'll be able to afford it! -- Meta-quote from the TeXbook: " `Producing Greek letters are as easy as pi - you just type ... as easy as $\pi$' - Leslie Lamport. "
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) (12/14/85)
In article <6214@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: > [...] 300/inch laser printers will not replace typesetting > machines, but they're going to steal a lot of the typesetting- > machine market. Unless it is pointed out to them most explicitly, > most users can see the difference only with poor fonts or difficult > jobs. ... or with small fonts (7 point and under), where some characters turn into indecipherable blobs. But you are correct in stating that many people do not care about the (still visible at 300dpi) difference. Beware, however, of using 300 dpi laser printer output as a master for copies. Unless your copier is in good shape, the results are often nearly unreadable. Using larger fonts (11 or 12 point) helps. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@mimsy.umd.edu