From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs as word processor Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:38:43 +0200 Message-ID: <83hab4ce1o.fsf@gnu.org> References: <5288A59E.7030109@dancol.org> <87vbzqfgd6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87mwl04w3k.fsf@zigzag.favinet> <87iovo4caz.fsf@zigzag.favinet> <877gc14vzs.fsf@zigzag.favinet> <878uwhxnqe.fsf@informatimago.com> <83txf4cw9z.fsf@gnu.org> <416D7143-AE4A-45FF-A3A3-AA208D268D97@informatimago.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1385156333 17196 80.91.229.3 (22 Nov 2013 21:38:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:38:53 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Nov 22 22:38:57 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 1VjyRA-0002kf-Mh for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:38:53 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41197 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VjyRA-00041X-3G for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:38:52 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45405) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VjyR3-00040E-0Q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:38:50 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VjyQx-0001IK-Oa for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:38:44 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout20.012.net.il ([80.179.55.166]:60085) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VjyQx-0001I9-BP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:38:39 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout20.012.net.il by a-mtaout20.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0MWO00K00PDHIC00@a-mtaout20.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:38:37 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout20.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0MWO00KZJPGD9Y90@a-mtaout20.012.net.il>; Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:38:37 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: <416D7143-AE4A-45FF-A3A3-AA208D268D97@informatimago.com> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.166 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:165582 Archived-At: > From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" > Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:06:23 +0100 > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > > My point is that WYSIWIG doesn't mean anything when you don't consider an "external" medium. I cannot disagree more. The main features of a document change very little with paper size changes. > >> - define styles, apply styles to tags. > > > > Isn't a "style" just another word for a "face"? > > For a character, perhaps. For higher level nodes, a style may be more complex, up to procedural styles, were you call up a lisp function to "font-lock" and justify the node (paragraph, chapter, etc). For paragraphs you would have margins and indentations and perhaps drop cap styles, etc. I see no reason for these features to be connected to a style. They can easily be separate; keeping them separate will make it easier for users to specify arbitrary combinations of them. > >> - assign parenthesized tags to text ranges (in a hierarchical structure > >> similar to SGML). > > > > Not sure what for. This is a solution to what problem? > > What I mean here is some kind of structured editing. > > To split a paragraph in two, we can admit the usual RET key. > > To split a section in two, we can admit the usual insertion of a section title. > But already here, most probably the user will enter a new paragraph containing the section title, and then select it and apply a header "style". Well, it's not style, it's the specification of a section header tag to this text, and by inference, the spitting of the current section in two. > > Those two examples have conventional "width of the ass of the horse" user interfaces, for conventional pre-defined tags:
<para>. > > But with the introduction of XSL and DTD, the user can be allowed to edit documents with a structure not pre-wired, with tags having now pre-defined conventional user interface. > > Therefore we need a standard way to edit the document tree. I think you confuse user interface with implementation. I can easily envision commands that insert a section header that don't need any idea about the document tree. > >> - then for the WYSIWIG aspect, we'd need to implement a rendering > >> engine. We have the basis with font faces, but more work is needed to > >> give a WISIWIG representation of the page, and its computed layout. > > > > I think you underestimate the power and feature-richness of the > > current Emacs display engine. We should try using it first, before we > > decide that it is inadequate and should be replaced or significantly > > changed. > > Perhaps. It's true that with truncate-lines mode, we'd get a a homothetic space, but can we adjust the height of the lines, can we adjust margins (to subpixel sizes). The former is possible today, the latter can be added (but I really don't see a need). > We'd have to disable removing truncate-lines mode What? why?? And why are you talking about truncate-lines, when Emacs has word-wrap for quite some time now? > >> Scrolling and zooming would behave differently in those WISIWIG > >> windows, since they're would contain essentially a graphic > >> representation of the page, like when we render PDF files. > > > > I see no need for abandoning graphical text display we use now. > > WYSIWIG. > > What we have now is not. But we can have WYSIWIG without that. > > None of the leading word processors does, AFAIK. Switching to displaying > > pictures has many drawbacks; e.g., you cannot easily copy/paste with > > it, and the display complexities will grow by orders of magnitude, for > > now good reason. > > Any WYSIWIG word processor displays a picture on the screen, and let you edit the underlying text data structure. Even emacs does just that, only it has a more direct correspondance between character cells on screens and character slots in the buffer. Of course, a character on glass is just a bunch of pixels. But if that is what you are talking about, then what exactly are you saying that we need to change from what we have today? > For example, in scrolling a word processor let you scroll pixel by pixel, while emacs let you only scroll line by line, even in the splash window. Emacs has pixel-level scrolling for a long time, it just is activated in very rare cases, so you perhaps don't know it exists. > Just take a good look at any WYSIWIG word processor window, and count the character pixels vs. the graphic pixels. There's a lot of graphics on them: rulers, margins, Emacs can display images as well, you know. We just need to use that. > I wouldn't mind a text editor that would let us edit enriched text. > But strangely, I doubt that would attract new users. Let's care about the features first, and talk about attractors later.