From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Karl Voit Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Emacs will never be a WYSIWYG-editor and should not try to (was: Emacs as word processor) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:11:53 +0100 Organization: www.karl-voit.at Message-ID: <2013-11-24T11-44-42@devnull.Karl-Voit.at> References: <2013-11-22T16-27-58@devnull.Karl-Voit.at> <83k3g0cnby.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: news1142@Karl-Voit.at NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1385291544 26850 80.91.229.3 (24 Nov 2013 11:12:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 11:12:24 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Nov 24 12:12:24 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXby-0004iS-Sn for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:12:23 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:46770 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXby-0008Uk-C0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:12:22 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:50711) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXbq-0008Ud-FO for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:12:19 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXbl-0000PW-9N for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:12:14 -0500 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:57033) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXbk-0000PL-UX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:12:09 -0500 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VkXbh-0004b5-Fu for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:12:05 +0100 Original-Received: from mail.michael-prokop.at ([88.198.6.110]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:12:05 +0100 Original-Received: from news1142 by mail.michael-prokop.at with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:12:05 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 132 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: mail.michael-prokop.at X-GPG-Key: http://www.Karl-Voit.at/Karl_Voit_GnuPG_public_key.gpg X-Registered-Linux-User: 224337 X-Confession: Pastafarian http://www.venganza.org/ User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9 (Linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:165649 Archived-At: A bit of a harsh statement in the subject. However, I will try to explain it: * Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> From: Karl Voit >> Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:19:34 +0100 >> >> 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? > > Because it is not necessarily faulty. Fair enough. I tend to follow the critique mentioned in [1]. > 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. > Quite the contrary, it's about giving them as much freedom as possible > to do things their way. I would be very pleased to see (low-tech) mock-ups of the GUI for WYSIWYG without forcing POVs to users. This is the only way to get onto a more concrete level of discussion about this topic. There are many new techniques the GNU/Emacs community has to learn and develop. I have got the feeling that this community has not had the need for those methods before. This also inherits a somewhat dangerous issue for all current GNU/Emacs users ("never change a running system"). >> 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. For my opinion: too philosophical compared to the very concrete request of RMS. >> 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. >> 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? This is somewhat OK to the current community although I know a lot of very good people who do complain about this. However, it is a big no-no for Joe Average's. > 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? In terms of a broad set of features/modules, Emacs is *the* number one software in the world (I guess). However, it can not change its underlying principles that much - IMHO. GNU/Emacs will never be a mouse-driven CAD tool. It will never be a 3D-first-person-shooter. It will never be a high-performance distributed data-base. It will never be a very large number of things. Don't get me wrong: It's perfectly OK to me. GNU/Emacs has its advantages but there are certain limitations so that GNU/Emacs can not deliver a solution to *any* requirement out there. What am I saying ... we do not even have multi-threading in GNU/Emacs in the wild! This is probably the most annoying issue with GNU/Emacs than anything else. Technically, I am no GNU/Emacs insider. However, I do claim that you can not think of turning GNU/Emacs in a WYSIWYG text processing machine without multi-threading. We should cope with our technical debts and deliver a robust platform instead of trying to get our minds over issues that are way out of our part of the IT-world. >> 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. > > For a devoted Emacs user, an Emacs solution will always blow any > 3rd-party solution out of the water. This is a very valid goal. In reality it is not always the case. > That's why there's Org mode, Gnus, Flymake, GUD, Flyspell, etc., > even though alternatives to each one of these exist, and some of > them might even be better/more sophisticated/whatever than what > Emacs has to offer in these areas. I totally agree to this. -- All in all, one of the most disturbing things today is the definitive fact that the NSA, GCHQ, and many more government organizations are massively terrorizing the freedom of us and the next generations.