Re: Emacs as word processor

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>,  ttn@gnu.org,  rms@gnu.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 08:56:45 -0500
> 
> > yet support variable sizes and fonts.)  All you can do is select one
> > of the existing faces.
> 
> We would only want to lift that restriction if we want to provide
> bad-WYSIWYG.  Good-WYSIWYG on the other hand is perfectly happy with
> that restriction, since the appearance of particular elements is only
> specified indirectly via style sheets.

I guess you've never used any of the *Office word processors, because
they allow this quite easily: there's a font selection combo on the
tool bar, and a size selection combo right next to it.  You mark the
text, then select any font and/or any size, and the marked text
acquires those attributes.  There are also tool-bar button to
gradually increase/decrease the size of the selected text.

Of course, there's also a style selection combo, which works the same
way, but I don't see how the former is "bad-WYSIWYG", certainly not as
opposed to the latter.  FWIW, I use the former very frequently,
because its effect is much more predictable than that of the style
(which comes with many strings attached, some of which you don't see
until it's too late).