Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 12:26:03 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Cc: "Daniel O'Callaghan" <danny@panda.hilink.com.au>, gjennejohn@frt.dec.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is Thot (WYSIWIG editor) for you? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970515120503.311M-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199705151431.AAA07023@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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On Fri, 16 May 1997, Michael Smith wrote: [On Thot] > It struck me as being rather opaque, so I've gone back to StarOffice 8) Bingo! When faced with only structural control I've found that perfectly intelligent and sophisticated computer users, even those who intellectually grasp the concept of descriptive markup, feel out of control and quickly retreat to the more familiar WYSIWYG or presentational markup systems (like TeX). The "procedural markup instinct" is amazingly strong. As a structured document proponent/evangelist, I find this problem extremely aggrivating. When the issue comes up in SGML circles, you hear some mumbling and then the topic is quickly changed. Algorithms and data structures are easy. Interfacing to humans is hard. I have this little voice in my head suggesting, on occasion, that the elegant concept of structured documents is doomed so long as it is humans creating the documents. :( That said, there are certainly ways that Thot could be made a bit less opaque. :) -john
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