On 5/22/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
We want them to have WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean). We generally do not want editors fussing with appearance too much while working on content, at least so long as we want people to stay productive (rather than spending hours futzing with getting the most attractive customized fonts for every heading) and so long as we want the look and feel to be even remotely consistent.
I don't think anyone has proposed allowing customised fonts for each heading. By WYSIWYG, I simple mean "You see bold when you want bold - you don't see ''' ". What distinction are getting at with "WYSIWYM"?
Our current system gets us pretty close to this, although the syntax does present a little learning curve. However, if people are really put off by the inability to do pretty formatting without a minimal amount of studying... can we really expect them to grok wiki writing overall?
You're belittling the value of such a project by suggesting it would only be useful for those "unable" to cope with wiki syntax. I have no problems with it, but I suspect I would be faster editing directly with word, being able to select text, press ctrl+b to bold/unbold etc. But god, can we please not turn this discussion into an argument on the value of WYSIWYG in general? There are those who like it, and those who don't. So long as those who like it do not impinge upon those who don't (by forcing it on them, reformatting whole articles etc) and as long as there is someone willing to develop such a thing, there should not be a problem.
So, improved editing systems.. not a bad thing, so long as we stay clear of turning the interface into a toy.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
I might have a go at hacking up a MS Word macro conversion script. It could be cute at any rate.
Steve