Re: Emacs as word processor

[Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>]

Hello Richard!

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word
> processing.  That is why we added text properties and variable width
> fonts.  However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
>
> Could people please start working on the features that are needed?

What a mind-blowing request.

However, I do see several issues with that.

First of all, I claim that WYSIWYG has issues of its own. Please do
read [1]. I admit, that this text is very old but the key points are
still valid. Most people I know who know WYSIWYG *and* their
alternatives are not always very happy with using WYSIWYG. So why
follow this path which is know to be faulty?

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.

Third, there is a huge difference in the typical group of GNU/Emacs
users and WYSIWYG-tool-users. GNU/Emacs users are happy to learn
keyboard shortcuts, tweak their environment to meet their
requirements, want to have absolutely control on what the computer
is doing, and so forth. It is a group of geeks[4] who is willing to
spend a certain time learning stuff in order to get a life-time
benefit.

On the other side, typical WYSIWYG-users just want to get the thing
done without even thinking of investing some time into learning a
tool that might offer the same. Please do not misinterpret me: this
is completely fine for many cases. I am oversimplifying a bit but
this is how the situation is to me. I gave many talks, workshops,
did one-to-one teaching, talked to other geeks and non-geeks in
order to promote the best tool for each job. Sometimes it is a
WYSIWYG-tool I recommend, sometimes it is a power-tool like
GNU/Emacs. 

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.

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. Giving them advice like "C-h t"  or "C-h
r" is nothing they accept - they need sleek web documentation and
probably nicely formatted PDFs. It is a completely different world
to enter.

In your other emails in this thread I know that you are thinking of
getting more Joe Averages to Emacs. What I assume is that you want
to have WYSIWYG-features not because *you* want to use it. I assume
that you are thinking of the possible wishes of a novice or
occasional computer user. So if my assumption is true, this
WYSIWYG-wish is not something that arises from your use cases.
Therefore you are assuming what other people might want to use.

However, there are tools out there, that provide a solution to this
use case. I already mentioned Microsoft Word and LibreOffice as the
most prominent WYSIWYG-tools for text processing. Joe Averages are
already using them and - as I already mentioned above - I can not
think of a way that they are changing their choice to GNU/Emacs.

For the typical GNU/Emacs user, there are alternatives that result
in results they are happy to live with: AucTeX/LaTeX, Org-mode [5],
or even LibreOffice. I never heard a geek saying "there has to be an
alternative to the current tool-set" (besides the usual issues which
may be fixed or improved in the future like, e.g., LaTeX and
Unicode-support, better error messages, and so forth).

Something which would be quite nice to think of would be using
GNU/Emacs (only) as a plug-in-editor for a wider range of software
tools.  I have to tweak my systems in order to be able to edit web
forms, Wiki pages, OWA emails, and so forth in my GNU/Emacs.
Seamlessly pushing text between third party software and GNU/Emacs
is something I would like to be eased. Write the text in GNU/Emacs
and process it with other tools.

In contrast to people telling you that your idea is not good, I
would like to find out, what the (hidden) motivation is. Is it the
"get Joe Average to use GNU/Emacs"? Is it the "I want to replace
LibreOffice with GNU/Linux"? Is it "I would like to see major and
new areas for GNU/Emacs"? Or is it something else?


  1. http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

  2. Novice users and occasionally users are able to use much more
  functionality with context-related feature representation than
  with deeply nested menus that are using only strict hierarchies
  for managing functionality. Not only the vocabulary problem [3] is
  proving this attempt a wrong one.

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Dumais

  4. I am proud to be called "a geek". Nothing to be ashamed of.

  5. You *definitely* have to get in touch with Org-mode! I guess it
  is the reason number one that new users get fascinated and switch
  to GNU/Emacs these days! I personally switched from gvim to
  GNU/Emacs just because of the beautiful rich world of Org-mode.
  Don't worry, Org-mode is huge but you can happily start with a
  very small sub-set of features. You'll get to the rest sooner or
  later :-)

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