Re: Readability of troff documents (Was: [Groff] Bug in gxditview)

[Mohammad Razwan]

On Fri, 23 May 2003 11:39:16 -0400 , Peter Schaffter <address@hidden>  wrote:
>Hi, all.
>
>On Fri, May 23, 2003, Gaius Mulley wrote:
>> Nevertheless it would be great to have a pseudo dreamweaver front end
>> (lyx) for producing groff allowing new users to edit the troff or edit
>> the wysiwyg. I wonder whether this could be done in Python?
>
Something along the lines of dreamweaver, but  dreamweaver isn't wysiwyg 
(depends on screen resolution etc doesn't). But definitely something like lyx 
is not needed. It tries to ``emulate'' a word processor and that isn't what is 
needed. What is needed is something that we allow you to define your own styles 
in *roff and then use these styles via the frontend. This seems more like the 
dreamweaver style philosophy IMHO. Besides lyx uses LaTeX on the backend, yuck!

>This has always been my dream.  Out of the
>wordprocessing-wysiwyg/textprocessing-formatting debate, one thing
>has always been clear: wysiwyg is the right tool for some things
>(like complex page layout), "coding" is the right tool for others.
I would disagree that wysiwyg is the right tool for a complex page layout. Ever 
tried putting a complex table together in M$WORD. Besides as I've already 
pointed wysiwyg is not the road to go down.

>In the early nineties, some software out of Britain called Quoin,
>which ran on Macs, did the dreamweaver thing: a split screen with
>editable wysiwyg at the top and "coded" text at the bottom.  Any
>edits to one screen were immediately reflected in the other.
>Brilliant, perfect solution.  Problem was, it was buggy.  The shop
>I worked in then used it to typeset a couple of contracts worth
>over a million dollars.  Problem was, it was buggy and closed
>source, so Quoin died.
We definitely don't need anything lik this. I don't care to look at what is 
being produced, until I run *roff the final time on a document. Sounds to me 
like another way to make my PC go real slow....one of the reasons I don't use 
M$ products.

>Still, I've always wondered if open-source couldn't take the
>concept and do it right?  Frankly, I wouldn't care whether the
>underlying engine was groff or TeX.  (Not quite true -- I don't
>like TeX that much. :) )

I use both TeX and *roff but I think a front end should be tailored so it fits 
the backend perfectly. In the mean time I shall stick with emacs. Besides 
having to handcode macros and markup manually has the advantage that not only 
do you understand the paradigm but it keeps you in the mode of having to work 
to get something to look real good, as opposed to just using the defaults that 
come with the front end.

Just my 2p worth.

Mohammad Razwan


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