Re: WYSIWYM editors

On 18/03/2007 00:30, Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:

> One of many things I think needs to be done with HTML is make it easier 
> to be editable with a WYSIWYM editor, without having an over 
> sophisticated UI.
> 
> Nobody has made a usable WYSIWYM editor for the HTML 4.01 standard as 
> it's near impossible, due to the complexity of the spec (such as being 
> able to explain in one line what tags mean).

Just for the record, I spent more than the last fifteen years of my life
trying to make average people think in terms of content rather than in
terms of style. Incidentally, I spent the last fifteen years of my life
working on markup editors, from GML to XML through SGML and HTML/XHTML.

Hear me well : this just does not work. It is *totally* utopic to expect
from average people (worst case: the sales director of your company)
they're ever going to think that way.

So if you're not only trying to make them think in terms of content but
also want them to understand what's a tag/element and that their content
should be readable without style, I'm afraid you're totally lost in
outerspace...

To make it short: forget it. Dave's approach is the only one that makes
sense.

</Daniel>

Received on Sunday, 18 March 2007 00:19:53 UTC