ArticlesYears ago, at the beginning of the academic year, members of my uni class surveyed a few members of the previous year’s intake: Of the two available word-processing tools, LaTeX and FrameMaker, which was better? We got mixed answers, and each student adopted their preferred choice, and – mostly – stuck with it for the whole year.
At the beginning of the next academic year, members of my uni class were surveyed by the new-comers with the same question. We also gave mixed answers. Universally, the students who had chosen LaTex recommended FrameMaker, and vice versa!
LaTeX differs significantly from FrameMaker in its approach; LaTeX is a mark-up language, while FrameMaker is a WYSIWYG editor.
At Girtby.net, Alastair writes to defend the ease of editing Wiki pages over WYSIWYG.
He makes some good points. I particularly resonated with the comments that Web authoring is not word processing, and that focussing on the content over the formatting is important. “Ransom note typography” is a great term for a common problem, and I plan to adopt it.
However, I think he misses some key points about WYSIWYG editors that I sorely miss when I am using mark-up languages over web-sites (including in the writing of this blog) .
Some key benefits of WYSIWYG editors over mark-up languages include:
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Instant feedback – when editing with a WYSIWYG editor I can see immediately that the wrong action has been taken. The errors that occur here are legion. A couple of common examples include including too many or too few characters within a style and completely mucking up finicky bullet points. With mark-up, these errors are not as visible. I need to spend more time in the boring proof-reading stage to overcome these problems.
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Poor spelling-checker integration – my current practice is to enter my blog articles, preview the output and then cut-and-paste into Word for spelling checks. I can’t start in Word, because the markup interferes.
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No syntax errors! There is little to compare to the anxiety caused by a LaTeX compilation error when your assignment is due. Your whole document is held to ransom by LaTeX until you find the mismatching brace. With your WYSIWYG document, however, it is ready to go to the printer at any time. To be fair, both Wiki and most HTML browsers are very generous when your markup makes no sense.
The benefits of tools like Microsoft Outlook over Wiki don’t stop there, because Outlook is a native application while Wiki is a puny little web-site! Few, if any, web-based editors have access to the most basic text-editing features that I desire – nay, demand!
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I need multiple levels of undo, to account for my multiple sequential mistakes.
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I would like to see my work spread-out over the entire screen, rather than jammed up in a piddly little text-box in a browser
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The Tab button should mean “indent” first and foremost and “select the next edit box” as a poor second.
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I don’t want to have to re-learn the arcane concepts of escaping reserved characters again for today’s markup language. Just look after it for me, okay?
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Auto-save! Auto-save! My kingdom for auto-save! Especially in an browser environment, where I don’t get prompted to save my changes when I close a window or hit Back.
Like Alastair, I can see there is room for both worlds. I’ll happily agree that WYSIWYG has some drawbacks. I do appreciate some of the benefits of having the mark-up text available to me; to a degree, I can move the abstractions in my head down on the page where I can see them and correct them. I think that is a call for some compromise, where both the internal workings and the WYSIWYG can be seen. (Word Perfect’s Reveal Codes, anyone?)
Ultimately, however, I think the typical author is going to mark something as a 20 point when they want it to be big, even if they are presented with an <h2> tag, a \subsection{} tag, a Heading2 style and the ## prefix. (Proof? I originally typed “AND” in the last sentence, before remembering that my own house style is not to use capitals for emphasis, but instead to use italics – or however that actually appears on your screen… err.. display device?)
The sad fact is that Alastair and I are long going to continue to be frustrated by people marking up their text with explicit details of font-size and colour – whether it is through the Format | Font menu or the font tag.
Comment by Alastair on September 6, 2005
All good points, and I had planned a followup where I showed how MarsEdit is a happy medium between the two: addressing of the limitations of browser-based editing but not imposing WYSIWYG editing on us all. Of your list of features for a WYSIWYG editor, MarsEdit provides all of those with the possible exception of instant feedback. Can’t run MarsEdit? Look at ecto.
Agree partially that most users “think formatted first” (if I can put it like that). However it’s a habit that soon fades. Particularly if you’re in mid-flow of a sentence and can’t remember what the house style is for emphasis, it’s actually conducive to writing to simply tag it as and move on. Once you’ve used a rich markup language like DocBook for any length of time, it becomes second nature to just use semantic tags everywhere instead of trying to remember what the current house style for formatting is… (or perhaps to put it more realistically, you spend your time wondering what the best semantic markup is rather than on what the most appropriate formatting is)
Comment by Alastair on September 6, 2005
Oops that should say “tag it as
<emphasis>” in that last paragraph. If only I had used a WYSIWYG editor… 🙂Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on September 6, 2005
Lack of instant feedback is only an issue if you’re using a very dumb editor. Syntax highlighting is the minimum I demand, and catches 95% of my stupid mistakes. The rest, if one is inclined to track those down, would be an issue of having a validating editor, like Emacs’ AUCTeX or nxml modes.
Comment by Julian on September 6, 2005
Alastair,
I looked briefly at the blurb for Ecto, and it seemed pretty exciting. I will have to give it a try. Thanks!
I have been mulling over the concept that “people soon learn” for a few months. Not so much in relation to this, but also when considering how we should treat people who used to be antisocial, but have now seen the light. For example, people who used to be violent criminals, be aggressive drivers, or even click on reply-to-all to say “please unsubscribe me from this list”, but who now act honourable.
It may well be true marking up semantics rather than fonts is something that people eventually learn, but we will always be dealing with yet more people who haven’t learned yet.
Comment by Julian on September 6, 2005
Aristotle,
Yes, the sort of very dumb editors that are traditionally provided by web-sites rather than applications (and I, again, cite the text box I am using to type in this comment.)
I am afraid you lost me there; I would love it if you could explain further.
Syntax highlighting is very powerful when you are using a sophisticated language, like a programming language. It can help ensure that your brackets are matched, and highlight when you type <emphass> rather than <emphasis>.
However, it can’t help you with the more basic stuff (like trying to remember that I can’t type <emphasis> straight in, but have to type <emphasis>. In fact, the first draft of this comment was mistaken full of “>” instead of “<” – a mistake I would never make in a WYSIWYG editor.
It also doesn’t reveal to you that you have included an extra space in your link title, or even forgottenthat you need a trailing space after an <a> tag but not after a <p> tag.
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on September 8, 2005
I concede that there isn’t usually a highlighting editor for wiki markup. I was referring to the LaTEX remarks.
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with any particular examples of highlighting failure you claim, I’ll ask a counterquestion. Have you tried entering any complex structure in a “WYSIWYG” editor, like MSWord or OOo Writer? I’ve needed to enter multilevel lists with multiparagraph items using different bulletting/numbering styles at different levels at various times. Every time I tried to make the magic Space, Enter and Backspace meanings (with Shift and Ctrl adding yet more magic, oh joy) produce a structure the way I meant to, I ended up pouncing on the keyboard randomly. That is, before pulling my hair out.
Maybe other people can really make WYSIWYG work for them, I don’t know. Personally I find markup drastically easier and more predictable (even when I make the inevitable mistakes).