4 ms·

I find the idea of wanting a WYSIWYG doc editor in emacs a bit out of left field. I wish he went into a bit more how he envisions that working. Would emacs dev

by AJRF 4y ago

I find the idea of wanting a WYSIWYG doc editor in emacs a bit out of left field. I wish he went into a bit more how he envisions that working. Would emacs developer builds some form a GUI toolkit or would it be built inside the existing concept of text buffers? Seems odd and a bit unfocused, and seems like a big wasted engineering effort for when something like LibreOffice exists.

teddyh 4y ago
Emacs is already able to display different fonts in various sizes and styles within the same buffer: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ I imagine that he simply wants this used to enable Emacs to be able to edit rich text in a WYSIWYG style.
- donio 4y ago
  You can already do that much with M-x enriched-mode which has been a part of Emacs for ages. I never felt the need to use it.
  - wara23arish 4y ago
    So am i able to use enriched mode in emacs and just copy these contents to a google doc or word and have the format be mostly working? Like does it include headers, fonts, etc
NoGravitas 4y ago
This has been the main thing RMS has wanted in Emacs since the late 90s or so. But I think not many Emacs users want it, nor many other Emacs developers. I think this is one of several cases where RMS is fixated on fighting the last war - in this case, vs. MS Word. But in the meantime, the importance of WYSIWYG document preparation as a main thing people use their computers for has greatly declined.
- oblio 4y ago
  > But in the meantime, the importance of WYSIWYG document preparation as a main thing people use their computers for has greatly declined. No, it hasn't. In developer circles, yes, slightly, because of Git, Markdown, etc. For regular folks (90%+ of folks out there), not at all. A doctor or biologist or quartermaster aren't about to write Markdown any day soon.
sys_64738 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_TeXmacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_TeXmacs
lejalv 4y ago
What is odd is that he mentioned LibreOffice when *GNU* TeXmacs (https://texmacs.org https://texmacs.org) exists. Edit: url
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
I don’t think it’s that odd. It’s just that probably you, like many others, see Emacs as a programming editor / IDE, while RMS sees the much broader applicability of this software. Nowadays if you want WYSIWYG you don’t even own the data anymore, it’s a Microsoft or Google editor as a SaaS in the browser. So Emacs covering this use case too would be extremely powerful and coherent from the software freedom angle.

by AJRF 4y ago

teddyh 4y ago

Emacs is already able to display different fonts in various sizes and styles within the same buffer: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ I imagine that he simply wants this used to enable Emacs to be able to edit rich text in a WYSIWYG style.

donio 4y ago
You can already do that much with M-x enriched-mode which has been a part of Emacs for ages. I never felt the need to use it.
- wara23arish 4y ago
  So am i able to use enriched mode in emacs and just copy these contents to a google doc or word and have the format be mostly working? Like does it include headers, fonts, etc

NoGravitas 4y ago

This has been the main thing RMS has wanted in Emacs since the late 90s or so. But I think not many Emacs users want it, nor many other Emacs developers. I think this is one of several cases where RMS is fixated on fighting the last war - in this case, vs. MS Word. But in the meantime, the importance of WYSIWYG document preparation as a main thing people use their computers for has greatly declined.

oblio 4y ago
> But in the meantime, the importance of WYSIWYG document preparation as a main thing people use their computers for has greatly declined. No, it hasn't. In developer circles, yes, slightly, because of Git, Markdown, etc. For regular folks (90%+ of folks out there), not at all. A doctor or biologist or quartermaster aren't about to write Markdown any day soon.

sys_64738 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_TeXmacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_TeXmacs

lejalv 4y ago

What is odd is that he mentioned LibreOffice when *GNU* TeXmacs (https://texmacs.org https://texmacs.org) exists. Edit: url

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

I don’t think it’s that odd. It’s just that probably you, like many others, see Emacs as a programming editor / IDE, while RMS sees the much broader applicability of this software. Nowadays if you want WYSIWYG you don’t even own the data anymore, it’s a Microsoft or Google editor as a SaaS in the browser. So Emacs covering this use case too would be extremely powerful and coherent from the software freedom angle.