Re: Emacs will never be a WYSIWYG-editor and should not try to

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>
> Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:11:53 +0100
> 
> A bit of a harsh statement in the subject. However, I will try to
> explain it:

I'm not sure you should bother: Emacs development is not driven by
arguments of this kind, it is driven by people who have an itch to
scratch.

For that matter, all this argument about whether Emacs should or
should not provide a WYSIWYG mode is pointless: there's no marketing
department or any kind of "management" to convince, which will then
take care of executing the decisions.  This feature will or will not
be developed depending on whether or not someone will decide to do
that.  When (if) such a person emerges, no amount of argument will
convince her either way, and I cannot imagine that the changes she
submits, if the code is clean, will be rejected because someone thinks
Emacs "should not try".

> > That document presents a point of view.  Some will agree with it, some
> > won't.  Emacs is not about forcing one particular POV on its users.
> 
> In my opinion, WYSIWYG is forcing one very particular POV on its
> users.

Only on those who will choose to use the WYSIWYG mode.  Because this
is what was suggested: addition of such a mode.  Nobody said that it
will come _instead_ of all the other existing non-WYSIWYG modes.
People who like using LaTeX or Texinfo or troff or whatever, will
still be able to use them.

IOW, no one's freedom will be diminished by such an addition, and no
one will be forced to accept the WYSIWYG paradigm if they don't want
to.

> I have got the feeling that this community has not had the need for
> those methods before.

We have an explicit request on the table now, don't we?

> >> Second, there are technical issues I do see. GNU/Emacs lacks a *lot*
> >> in terms of GUI widget-set. Yes, I do believe that ribbons are
> >> better[2] than menus for WYSIWYG tools but it's not only ribbons
> >> that are missing. Users of WYSIWYG-tools are heavily using buttons
> >> (mainly) and menu items (seldom) as studies show. This is not the
> >> way GNU/Emacs is working. The button bar is very static. Not every
> >> functionality is reachable via menu bar. Besides, menu bars got the
> >> severe issue mentioned in [2][3] and we should do better than this.
> >
> > Yes, the job at hand is not small.  But does that mean we shouldn't
> > take steps in that direction?  I hope not.
> 
> This is quite a philosophical response to my IMHO specific
> statement.

Perhaps I didn't understand your statement, then.  It looked like a
list of missing features that will have to be implemented as part of
the job.  If you didn't mean to say by that list that the job is
large, then what did you mean to say?

> >> Maybe I lack a huge amount of fantasy here but I don't think that
> >> GNU/Emacs is going to be used by Joe Average who has no special IT
> >> knowledge when there are alternative tools like Microsoft Word or
> >> LibreOffice.
> >
> > We want to attract Joe Average's.  But what we want more is to give
> > Emacs geeks a way to compose document in WYSIWYGy fashion.
> 
> It would be interesting to discuss, where this requests are coming
> from. So far I could not get the impression that this is a
> wide-spread wish.

As I said, we _do_ want to attract.  But I have yet to see a single
Emacs features whose driver was _only_ to attract newcomers.  Emacs
development is not driven by such factors, they are at best
"additional considerations".

> >> Besides: if you want to attract non-geeks, prepare that they will
> >> complain that there is no suitable support, that they do not want to
> >> use mailing-lists or usenet (they prefer something which is called
> >> Web Forum), and so forth.
> >
> > Let them complain, we've heard those complaints for many years and
> > didn't care.
> 
> In case you "want to attract Joe Average's", don't you think this is
> a very severe problem?

No, I don't, because the main motivation of whoever will do this job
(if such a person will step forward) will most probably be that she
thinks the feature is "cool", not that it will or won't attract
someone.

> > But why shouldn't someone like RMS be able to compose a simple
> > document without switching to LibreOffice or whatnot?  There's no
> > excuse for that.
> 
> I simply cannot follow your arguments I am afraid. When I try to
> follow your thoughts, I get to questions like: "why shouldn't
> someone like RMS be able to draw mouse-driven vector graphics
> without switching to CorelDraw/LibreOffice or whatnot?" What is your
> thought about this?

Richard didn't ask about those other capabilities.  And the fact that
he didn't makes very good sense to me.

> I do claim that you can not think of turning GNU/Emacs in a WYSIWYG
> text processing machine without multi-threading.

I don't see the connection between these two.