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Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 01/03/06 13:32
On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Mark Parnell wrote:
> Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, pedro
> <pedro@nowhere.com> spouted in alt.html:
>
> > However I don't want to have to do coding. I just want to be able to use
> > a WYSIWYG page creator.
>
> Then you have to be prepared to accept less-than-ideal code.
In HTML, "what you get" is structured markup, whether you want it or
not. If what the author was seeing was structured markup, then the
term "what you see is what you get" *might* just make some kind of
sense. But what the Great Unwashed think they mean by WYSIWYG is very
far from that. The best that can be said about HTML with that kind of
approach is "what you see is not what others get". It's pretty much
guaranteed that results will be sub-optimal when the authoring tool -
i.e a graphical *manipulation* editor - is at such variance with the
underlying architectural principles - i.e structural markup in HTML
and optional presentational proposal(s) in CSS stylesheet(s). You
can't make e.g structural blockquotes - or anything else that involves
understanding the semantics of the original content - merely by
shoving lumps of text around a graphical screen.
> Though anything is better than Word
It's feasible to do a fine job with Word:
- create the Word document using a suitable style template, *not*
by direct formatting[1]
- export the Word document to RTF
- use a suitable third-party RTF-to-web converter (the one I used to
use at work is now obsolete, but I suppose that its successor,
Logictran RTF converter, is even better).
Word has had working structural markup since long before it was
practical to deploy it in WWW technology! The sad part is that so few
Word users have learned to use it.
Stay away (of course) from any MS software which purports to extrude
HTML.
> Word is a word processor, not an HTML editor.
Nevertheless, there are ways of using it which make it better than any
soi-disant "wysiwyg" editor. I pity that I haven't had the
opportunity to explore that better in recent times, but from what
limited experience I had in the past, I was satisfied enough with the
results *at that time* (by now those results are outdated HTML/3.2-ish
stuff, and I wouldn't present them here now with any pride, but I
insist that for their time, they stood up well).
> > Of the WYSIWYMG editors, Nvu <http://nvu.com/> is the best.
It, like Mozilla Composer, is a graphical previewing web page editor.
One can see, and edit, "what one gets", i.e the structural markup, as
well as preview what one browser would display in response. Used
properly, I reckon it's a fine tool (I must admit I still use a
plaintext editor myself, indeed it's got easier since we tossed out
HTML/3.2 and went mainly "Strict").
I can't be bothered with all these "WYSINWOG", "WYSIJOPR", "WYSIWYMG"
confuddling alphabet salads. Can't we try calling things for what
they are, rather than for what ignorant folks who have no
understanding of the underlying principles want to call them?
cheers
[1] If I had my "druthers", the direct formatting buttons in Word
would be ripped out, and their functions hidden away in some obscure
menu for advanced users, leaving the normal user only with style
template settings for paragraph and phrase styles.
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