[Bug-wget] [OT] WYSIWYG vs. WYMIWYG

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Tim Ruehsen <address@hidden> writes:
>>>>> Am Thursday 07 June 2012 schrieb Giuseppe Scrivano:
>>>>> Tim Ruehsen <address@hidden> writes:

        [I'd have made a cross-post, and set Followup-To:, to
        news:comp.text, should this be a (proper) newsgroup, and not a
        mailing list.  Still, I'd like to welcome anyone interested to
        continue the discussion in the newsgroup, especially it has seen
        some postings relevant to the question recently.]

 >>> Do you care about the docs ?

 >> it will be good to have this feature documented too.

 > ;-) I meant 'Do you document the feature'

 > I am not into texinfo / emacs since 15 years.  And i am not willing
 > to start that again.  Give me a WYSIWYG editor like openoffice,

        There're many known issues with the WYSIWYG approach, which is
        why it's sometimes dubbed WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You Get)
        and (or) rejected outright.  (The “office productivity” suites
        get some criticism on these grounds just as well.)

        Other than in news:comp.text, this very problem was recently
        discussed in the “neighboring” groff@ list.

 > lyx and everything will be fine ...  Todays docs should be in pdf
 > and/or html,

        Please note that LyX isn't WYSIWYG, and neither is HTML.  (Which
        is, actually, an argument in favor of them.)

        As for the documentation, there're a couple of drawbacks, one
        specific to PDF, and the other shared by both of them.

        The first one is that PDF is way too much focused on the
        presentation (and not the semantics, like HTML is.)  In
        particular, it's page-oriented, while computer displays are,
        arguably, a bit more flexible than that.

        Also, I know of no easy way to change the formatting of a PDF.
        Suppose, for instance, that the PDF is for US Letter paper, but
        I want to print it on ISO A4 instead.  (Naturally, the former is
        rather uncommon outside of US.)  Or, I want to make an A5-or-so
        paperback.  Or, I want a larger font for accessibility.  All of
        that (and much more, I guess) is what you get with TeXinfo (and
        the like), but /not/ with PDF-only documentation.

        The second drawback is the semantics of the index.  With HTML
        and PDF, one gets to the “Index” HTML page, and starts searching
        for, e. g., the “printf” substring from there, invariably
        stumbling over asprintf first (only to be followed with fprintf,
        etc.)  With Info, one gets to the relevant portion of the manual
        with “i printf RET” instantly, and from whatever page.

 > but that's just my opinion and I don't want to start a discussion.

        I still hope that the points above will provide some explanation
        for the choice of non-WYSIWYG formats by so many free software
        projects out there.

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