Anthony Anson wrote:
<traitorous statement>
I didn't see you close your <traitorous statement> tag, does that mean there's more to come? :P
Oh and it should probably be <traitorous_statement> or <traitorousstatement> - check your HTML for Dummies book ;)
<rant>
Even as newbies I wonder if we're falling into a trap that FOSS* seems to suffer from. We've both said that possibly the best way to solve the problem of there not being a good web page creator that doesn't require programming knowledge for Linux, is to learn HTML.
Joe Public is not a geek. Joe Public should not be forced into geekdom in order to drive a computer. If you tell Joe Public he has to become a geek to use a computer he will use Windows and go on being treated like an idiot.
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. The problem is that FOSS developers write software to scratch their itches (was this one of RMS's revelations?).
When it comes to writing a web page creator, the developers don't *have* an itch to scratch, they have a text editor. Who scratches everyone elses itches? *Should* anyone scratch everyone elses itches, or should everyone else be charged through the teeth to have their itches scratched by a giant proprietary back scratcher?
I'm sure it's possible for the Open Source community to write a WYSIWYG editor for GNU/Linux that generates clean, W3C compliant code with a intuitive user interface. But where's the incentive to write one?
</rant>
*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!