[net.text] embedded-command text systems

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!mikem

mash@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