Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:06:10 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> Cc: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is Thot (WYSIWIG editor) for you? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970514075151.311s-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199705140805.BAA03496@rah.star-gate.com>
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On Wed, 14 May 1997, Amancio Hasty wrote: > For sure the algorithms used in Thot are worth looking into. > > What I am pitching is for is that if Thot is good we can start advertising it > and hopefully standardize our internal documentation based on its format. > Internal documentation meaning things like : reports, articles, etc... It is important to make clear the difference between standardizing the *data* and standardizing the *application*. The computer industry on the whole has focused on the latter to the benefits of vendors and at great cost to the user. The typical user has a much greater investment in their data than in the software they used to create it, yet the data formats are only of secondary consideration. Breaking this dammaging tradition requires inverting the standard line of "does it work with my favorite application" and thinking about in terms of "does the application work with the data". For this to work, the data standard must be nailed down. This is where SGML, or possibly its recent offspring, XML, come in. SGML is application neutral, yet flexible enough for most any documentation task. It is rapidly gaining momentum as well. Corel WordPerfect, for example, is quite proficient at dealing with SGML documents and is even shipped with the Docbook DTD. Even Microsoft is drifting (slowly) toward SGML support. The critical thing is that SGML documents can be exchanged between all these tools with absolutely *no* markup loss or corruption. The same cannot be said for any other format that I'm aware of. Basically, understand the data, then write the application. My concern is that the focus here is on the application (Thot). About the application, from by brief exposure (via Amaya) the general model that Thot uses is seems to be conceptually compatible with SGML, but I don't know how well the compatibility carries down to the nitty gritty details. If it doesn't it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to fix it. However, a year or two ago I did a little research project on structure enforcing editors for both programming languages and human languages. The problem with all of them is that they tend to impose the structure of a *finish* program or document. The only time the program exists in that state is when you are done editing it. During the editing process, it is absolutely essential that an editor allows the authors to create and fiddle structurally/syntactically incorrect document fragments with ease. If not, the editor will hinder more than it helps. My only experience with Thot is through Amaya and my initial impression was that it would be a royal pain to actually write something with it. Other SGML editors are afflicted with similar problems. In my opinion, emacs+psgml strikes a nice balance by allowing you to check structure/syntax and get help on structure/syntax without actually imposing it in a dictatorial fashion. (...but I personally use nedit most of the time...) -john
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