On 2003-12-03 23:42:19 +0000 Ben Francis ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
I believe that last time the HTML topic came up a lot of people were saying that a text editor is the best (or only) way to make web pages. That's fine for geeks who care about these things, but not so great for Joe.
Was the user of WordPerfect back in "Reveal Codes" days a geek? That showed you highlighted letters for where the different effects switched off and on, allowing you to tidy up empty areas and so on, for faster printing and display.
Anyway, a short recap of what I remember from the last discussion: there are some GUI tools, but code editing gives the finest control. A true "WYSIWYG [HTML] editor" is impossible. The incentive for better editors is likely to be money, as is often the case. Where's it going to come from?
*FOSS my acronym of the week thanks to slef - try typing "define: OSS" into google, then guess the rest - that's my google trick of the week!
See http://mjr.towers.org.uk/writing/ambigopen.html and also http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html although I think that's a bit close to using the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in places and I'm not sure I agree with it all.