Hello everybody, My name is Rob and I live in Norwich. I work for a global financial institution as an e-support coach, which basically means I travel the length & breadth of the UK, training and coaching our staff and financial advisers on how to use our trading software. In the past I was mainly involved in retail although I spent some time with Gateway, the American PC manufacturer, in their business division. I found ALUG in Linux Format magazine and thought I'd sign up. I am a very green newbie to Linux! I've often pondered giving it a go and after talking to a former work colleague who is Linux crazy, I thought "What the hell, I have nothing to lose", and promptly went out and bought a couple of books that both came with Red Hat 9. I installed it onto my laptop and within about 20 minutes or so, I was up and running. Since then, I've just messed around with it and dipped in to the books occasionally. It takes a little getting used to after years of Windows usage, but it's like a pair of new shoes...familiar, if a little uncomfortable to start with. I have to admit that since then, I've trawled the net for information and stuff, and have ended up downloading many new distributions such as Slackware, Knoppix, Peanut, Morphix, DamnSmallLinux and LNX-BBC to name but a few. I've also gone a bit crazy and downloaded loads of apps and stuff. All I really want to do is get a real feel for the OS and the whole Open Source community and what it has to offer. Although I don't see myself abandoning Windows, I do see myself using Linux to do all the things that are too darn expensive to do on Windows, such as Web Design etc. You see, I have no programming ability whatsoever and I have yet to find a web design program that wasn't either difficult to use, severely lacking in features or didn't cost the same as the Gross National Product of a small European nation! With Open Source, it looks like I can be more creative and productive at significantly less cost than with Windows. Sadly, I have yet to discover a really good and stable music sequencing package (a la Cubase) as I am a part time musician. I have just downloaded Rosegarden 4 and will give that a go soon. Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I'd love to hear from fellow newbie's, and I might just be able to pop along to the meeting on the 11th if work commitments allow. Hope to see some of you soon, Rob.
Hi Rob, and welcome! I would say I'm one of the newbies you speak of ;)
I have yet to find a web design program that wasn't either difficult to use, severely lacking in features or didn't cost the same as the Gross National Product of a small European nation!
My favourite Windows application is Macormedia Dreamweaver, and yes it is extremely expensive.
With Open Source, it looks like I can be more creative and productive at significantly less cost than with Windows.
If by "I have no programming ability whatsoever" you mean you wouldn't be happy writing HTML either then you may struggle to find a decent web design package in Linux, as I have. I'm perfectly happy to write HTML, but there are times when I think a WYSIWYG editor makes me more productive. I've yet to find anything in Linux to completely replace Dreamweaver in that sense - I'm still using specialised text editors. However, there are some programs you might want to look at. For basic WYSIWYG editing you might find Mozilla Composor which comes with Mozilla useful. It's very basic compared to Dreamweaver but does the job and does it reasonably well. Specialised text editors like Quanta Plus and Bluefish are the best way I've found to make web pages in Linux. The purists will suggest the vi (or vim) editor. Let me know if you find anything better!
Sadly, I have yet to discover a really good and stable music sequencing package (a la Cubase) as I am a part time musician. I have just downloaded Rosegarden 4 and will give that a go soon.
I'm struggling to find one of these too. What have you tried? I'm a fan of Cubase but haven't found anything equivelent to this either. I'm interested in a combination of Wave files and MIDI files with a decent mixer to make music. The Skale Tracker (http://www.skale.org) claim to have a working Linux version but I'm yet to get it to do anything useful. It's also not open source. I've seen Rosegarden 2.1, but nothing more recent. This appears to be MIDI only? Does anyone know of any other applications to try out? -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only
On Wednesday 03 December 2003 18:05, Ben Francis wrote:
However, there are some programs you might want to look at. For basic WYSIWYG editing you might find Mozilla Composor which comes with Mozilla useful. It's very basic compared to Dreamweaver but does the job and does it reasonably well.
Specialised text editors like Quanta Plus and Bluefish are the best way I've found to make web pages in Linux. The purists will suggest the vi (or vim) editor.
Let me know if you find anything better!
For WYSIWYG GUI editing you might even try using OpenOffice. The word processing module will export a reasonable HTML file and the HTML editor (I don't really understand why they are distinct modules) does a fair editing job. -- GT
The message <FOEKIEAOKIIDEJDHCPKCIECHCDAA.rob@puricelli.freeserve.co.uk> from "Roberto Puricelli" <rob@puricelli.freeserve.co.uk> contains these words:
Although I don't see myself abandoning Windows, I do see myself using Linux to do all the things that are too darn expensive to do on Windows, such as Web Design etc. You see, I have no programming ability whatsoever and I have yet to find a web design program that wasn't either difficult to use, severely lacking in features or didn't cost the same as the Gross National Product of a small European nation! With Open Source, it looks like I can be more creative and productive at significantly less cost than with Windows. Sadly, I have yet to discover a really good and stable music sequencing package (a la Cubase) as I am a part time musician. I have just downloaded Rosegarden 4 and will give that a go soon.
I hereby confess to being a newbie too. <traitorous statement> In Windows, Arachnophilia 4 is free, easy to use and, well, so are most proper HTML editors, as opposed to Frontpage, which writes as much useless guff as useful. Linux: I haven't made any pages in Mozilla's editor yet, but the bit of twiddling I have done seems just as easy. HTML for Dummies is, I believe, about £10. If you need it that will tell you the areas of a page and the various tags and what they do. You can get HTML document-cheching programs to seek out and show mistakes or bad coding. It's all very simple. My advice would be to download Arachnophilia on your Windows box (www.arachnophilia.com) and download a website you like, then open it in Arach and see how it is constructed. You don't need an expensive package, especially a WYSIWYG one which will write acres of redundant and non-standards-compliant code: all you need is a decent browser (Mozilla or Opera, or better, both, or one of the older Netscapes, and run a browser and the editor in tandem. You can cut and paste bits into a document of your own, (and then wonder why something you had expected at the top appears somewhere else.......) and if you save the page as a file, you can open it with your browser to check it, minimise it and adjust the page in Arach, save it, maximise the browser (not forgetting to refresh) and so-on. It really is very easy. I 'hand code' most of my pages anyway, and no-one could accuse me of being a techie. Tetchy sometimes, perhaps. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
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! -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only
The message <3FCE74DB.5060106@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> from Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> contains these words:
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?
Quite. I haven't closed the traitorous tag yet - while there are good free HTML editors in Windows and Linux there's no incentive to make an (alleged) WYSIWYG program. Joe Public is quite capable of using an ordinary HTML editor, or even copying the codes from a small document on paper (yes, RL rears its ugly head) into an ASCII program such as Notepad and just renaming it with a HTML or HTM extension. It really is that easy, and anyone who can navigate round a computer can pick it up in minutes. I know I was delighted to find absolutely no problems with what I had expected to be a Dark Art, and still baffled by some of the goings-on in Word. (I *STILL* prefer Locoscript!) I still haven't closed that tag, nor have I closed 'body' or HTML as I have an idea that this subject has legs. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
On Thursday 04 December 2003 00:02, Anthony Anson wrote:
Joe Public is quite capable of using an ordinary HTML editor, or even copying the codes from a small document on paper (yes, RL rears its ugly head) into an ASCII program such as Notepad and just renaming it with a HTML or HTM extension.
Capable, yes. Willing, not so sure. People who use Windows expect a fully graphical approach to anything, whether it does the job better or not. Once persuaded of the benefits of manual mark-up they're surely capable, but if they're only doing lightweight HTML the problem is in making that first step. Many Windows users regard Linux as "DOS but more complicated" and therefore a retrograde step back from the wonderful world of on-screen widgets. The way to tempt them in is to provide familiar eye-candy, not lecture them with a stern, Spartan "Do it this way, it's good for you". -- GT
On 2003-12-04 09:44:44 +0000 Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> wrote:
Capable, yes. Willing, not so sure. People who use Windows expect a fully graphical approach to anything, whether it does the job better or not. Once persuaded of the benefits of manual mark-up they're surely capable, but if they're only doing lightweight HTML the problem is in making that first step. Many Windows users regard Linux as "DOS but more complicated" and therefore a retrograde step back from the wonderful world of on-screen widgets. The way to tempt them in is to provide familiar eye-candy, not lecture them with a stern, Spartan "Do it this way, it's good for you".
Tra la la... OK... another spin on the whole thing... which rendering engine to base the results on? Gecko? IE? some other engine? who's interpretation of the CSS2 spec is correct (IE's is lacking rather major bits). What exactly do people want from a HTML editor? Would it be the "I want to change this piece of text here in to that font for no apparent reason and also change the colour so that you can't read it against the background because I'm a leet GUI using 'web designer'"? That'd end up with the usual very messy code. Dreamweaver users get over these problems by using tables *EVERYWHERE* and don't worry, generally, about how that is going to degrade, or what will happen if read by a screenreader, or, well, anything really. Anyways - still fuzzy, time for tea. (Just in case you hadn't guessed, I'm an avid user of that wonderful HTML editor, vim :) Brett.
The message <200312040944.44929.gt@pobox.com> from Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> contains these words:
On Thursday 04 December 2003 00:02, Anthony Anson wrote:
Joe Public is quite capable of using an ordinary HTML editor, or even copying the codes from a small document on paper (yes, RL rears its ugly head) into an ASCII program such as Notepad and just renaming it with a HTML or HTM extension.
Capable, yes. Willing, not so sure. People who use Windows expect a fully graphical approach to anything, whether it does the job better or not. Once persuaded of the benefits of manual mark-up they're surely capable, but if they're only doing lightweight HTML the problem is in making that first step.
Hmmm. Seems that lightweight HTML is the ideal starting-point. Positioning text-boxes and objects within them is not an ideal position for 'the off'. Once the new user gets his head round the concept that what appears to be at first sight a non-graphical approach is displayed on a screen and ipso facto 'graphical' without the pretty bits, the battle is won. It's taking the plunge and finding the water really is warmer than it looks.
Many Windows users regard Linux as "DOS but more complicated" and therefore a retrograde step back from the wonderful world of on-screen widgets. The way to tempt them in is to provide familiar eye-candy, not lecture them with a stern, Spartan "Do it this way, it's good for you".
Candy is dandy, but writing is frighting? I wouldn't dream of advocating something 'because it is good for you', having memories of being at boarding school and being dosed with all sorts of medicines and supplements ('iron' springs to mind) because I was ailing fast, and no-one recognised lead poisoning.... As has been said earlier, WYSIWYG is NWYSIWYG: quite the reverse, and tends to bork anything except in the browser it was intended to be viewed in. (No prizes awarded for correct identification of respective elements.) -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
On Thursday 04 December 2003 11:29, Anthony Anson wrote:
I wouldn't dream of advocating something 'because it is good for you', having memories of being at boarding school and being dosed with all sorts of medicines and supplements ('iron' springs to mind) because I was ailing fast, and no-one recognised lead poisoning....
As has been said earlier, WYSIWYG is NWYSIWYG: quite the reverse, and tends to bork anything except in the browser it was intended to be viewed in. (No prizes awarded for correct identification of respective elements.)
Fine for professionals, which seems to cover many of the people in this group. But if Joe is an ordinary guy at home wanting to put up a family website on FreeServe, why on earth would he care if the result runs on Lynx or whatever? He knows that 99% of viewers will be running IE and won't give a toss for the rest. He doesn't do it for the love of it; he has no concept of what makes tidy HTML but wants results NOW and preferably at little or no cost. I do the occasional set of web pages, mainly simple stuff. I prefer RAD tools for getting me started but I'm quite happy to tweak it manually from there on in. I use Symantec's Visual Page, now long abandoned by its maker. Produces clean HTML that I've seen no browser object to and has the usual manual editing option. I'd like the same kind of thing on Linux but haven't seen it yet. Like Joe, I have better things to do than type all those tags if I can get a program to do it for me, and if the results are occasionally not what I expected, that's life. P.S. My car is an automatic, I own a dishwasher and my TV/Video/CD all have remote controls. -- GT
The message <200312041326.28812.gt@pobox.com> from Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> contains these words:
As has been said earlier, WYSIWYG is NWYSIWYG: quite the reverse, and tends to bork anything except in the browser it was intended to be viewed in. (No prizes awarded for correct identification of respective elements.)
Fine for professionals, which seems to cover many of the people in this group.
I'm not a professional.
But if Joe is an ordinary guy at home wanting to put up a family website on FreeServe, why on earth would he care if the result runs on Lynx or whatever?
And ditto, but not on Freeserve.
He knows that 99% of viewers will be running IE and won't give a toss for the rest. He doesn't do it for the love of it; he has no concept of what makes tidy HTML but wants results NOW and preferably at little or no cost.
There I must disagree: many people run two or more browsers, and 1% is IMO an underestimate by a very large factor. Don't forget, that there are Mac, RISC, Commodore etc users out there as well as Windows-based ones, and of the Windows users, many have more than one browser. I have Firebird, Opera and Netscape on my Windows box, and only keep IE because it's cunningly built into the system. I test my pages in Mozilla, Opera and Netscape, and I don't give a flying **** if they display in IE.
I do the occasional set of web pages, mainly simple stuff. I prefer RAD tools for getting me started but I'm quite happy to tweak it manually from there on in. I use Symantec's Visual Page, now long abandoned by its maker. Produces clean HTML that I've seen no browser object to and has the usual manual editing option. I'd like the same kind of thing on Linux but haven't seen it yet.
Mozilla.
Like Joe, I have better things to do than type all those tags if I can get a program to do it for me, and if the results are occasionally not what I expected, that's life.
Well, you take second-best. That's your loss.
P.S. My car is an automatic, I own a dishwasher and my TV/Video/CD all have remote controls.
My car is manual, wind-up/down windows and presently not on the road. I haven't got room for a dishwasher at home, indeed, until I can find a single-tub I haven't got a washing-machine at all, and I haven't had a haunted fishtank since the early 'seventies. My CD player does have a remote, but I haven't a clue where it is. This isn't because I'm a Luddite: it's because: I don't like driving an automatic and I wouldn't be able to afford to get it fixed if the transmission went wrong. Got the T-shirt. Living alone, I haven't enough dishes etc to make a dishwasher practical, even if I had somewhere to put it. If I had somewhere to put a larger washing machine I'd get one, meanwhile it's doing it how I remember my mother doing the washing in the 'forties. ('Cept I haven't got a copper.) TV. Won't pay the licence fee for what's on offer: besides, I just don't have the time. The CD player is used only infrequently: lack of time again, and I've played all my CDs many times over. And before you say it - no, I haven't been spending lots of time writing HTML - a bit of Visual Basic maybe - I have some RL to attend to as well. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
On Thursday 04 December 2003 14:05, Anthony Anson wrote:
I do the occasional set of web pages, mainly simple stuff. I prefer RAD tools for getting me started but I'm quite happy to tweak it manually from there on in. I use Symantec's Visual Page, now long abandoned by its maker. Produces clean HTML that I've seen no browser object to and has the usual manual editing option. I'd like the same kind of thing on Linux but haven't seen it yet.
Mozilla.
Excellent! Just what I was looking for. Thanks for the pointer. I'm sure I did a search on HTML editors and I can't remember Mozilla coming up. It seems to be a lot easier to find paid-for software on Google than the free stuff - is that my imagination or am I lacking search skills? Mozill is exactly the kind of tool I can use to sell Linux to my Windows user friends who tell me how wonderful GoLive! is. Telling them to hand-code in a text editor is pointless; the majority aren't even aware there IS a scripting language behind the pretty pictures. Judging by the way this thread has progressed I must have very different friends to some of the other folks in this group. -- GT
Graham Trott wrote:
Mozilla is exactly the kind of tool I can use to sell Linux to my Windows user friends who tell me how wonderful GoLive! is. Telling them to hand-code in a text editor is pointless; the majority aren't even aware there IS a scripting language behind the pretty pictures. Judging by the way this thread has progressed I must have very different friends to some of the other folks in this group.
I know what you mean, Graham. I do sometimes wonder if some of the people on this list actually have any friends whose first language isn't binary. (No offence intended :D ). I even often wonder why the QWERTY keyboard has been the main method of inputting text into a machine for nearly 140 years. Especially seeing as the QWERTY layout was intially designed to slow typists down. When I go to heat my tea up in the microwave (it happens a lot) I don't have to edit a text config file by pressing "Shift-r" and then ":wq" to callibrate the speed the turntable turns at. I don't have to type "reheat -power full -time 00:00:30, eject /dev/door/" I just open the door, press "micro power", press "10s" three times and press "go". When I press the remote on my TV I need ONE button to change the channel, I don't have feed in the frequency, brightness, contrast and aspect ratio with about three attempts before I get my syntax right. I don't need to run a search on Google to switch my bedroom light on. OK, I think you get my point now... This isn't about being lazy or not taking an interest in the way things work. To me a computer isn't a monitor, keyboard, mouse and a box of tricks under the desk. A computer is a tool to help humans carry out tasks. A machine with an input, process and output. Much like a tin opener, a bike or even a microwave. The problem is a question of ergonomics, not of intelligence. Perhaps bringing up the point of usable GUIs and ergonomics in relation to making web pages was a bad move. I've been there before and I always lose the argument. To Dave, who said "I am *so* un-techy that I can't even get my soundcard to work in Linux." WHAT?! The fact that you're even ON this mailing list suggests that you at least know how to operate a keyboard, a mouse, a web browser and a mail reader - and more importantly, you know Linux *exists* and you know what a sound card is! In my book that makes you a *very* technical person. This definately isn't a "I can do this in Windows but it looks hard in Linux" rant. I don't think Windows is at all intuitive, or even Apple Macs for that matter. I watch people using computers every day and nobody uses menus the way they were intended to be used. Nobody looks through all the menus on a web page to figure out where to go - they make a quick best guess and fumble around until they find what they're looking for. The general thought process is not "How did the creator of this page intend me to navigate it?" - it's "Don't make me think, I'm in a hurry." Probably the favourite acronym amongst all of the cryptic jargon used by computer enthusiasts is RTFM. I'd like to raise the question: Should a computer *need* an instruction manual? OK, now I've had my second rant of the week and probably upset a few people, I'm off to practice what I preach and try fixing a PHP script before bed... -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only "Closed societies that are occupied by like-minded individuals breed ignorance." -- Naritas
On Thursday 04 Dec 2003 11:21 pm, Ben Francis wrote:
Probably the favourite acronym amongst all of the cryptic jargon used by computer enthusiasts is RTFM. I'd like to raise the question: Should a computer *need* an instruction manual?
The nirvana of all interface design is operability without instruction. If the user interface has good affordance and feed back it could become idiot proof. However it seems that they are breeding better idiots all the time so this nirvana it seems will never be attained. Well versed users will always get tired of having ther hands held and joe public will always just need that little bit of help that isn't there. You will never please everybody all the time it just ain't possible, interface design is and always will be a compromise. Cheers, BJ
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 00:22:42 +0000 John Woodard <mail@johnwoodard.co.uk> wrote:
The nirvana of all interface design is operability without instruction. If the user interface has good affordance and feed back it could become idiot proof. However it seems that they are breeding better idiots all the time so this nirvana it seems will never be attained.
Someone once said; "You can never make anything that is foolproof. Fools are far to ingenious." Don't know who it was though.
On 2003-12-04 23:21:09 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
I know what you mean, Graham. I do sometimes wonder if some of the people on this list actually have any friends whose first language isn't binary. (No offence intended :D ).
Some taken.
I even often wonder why the QWERTY keyboard [...]
As you know, I use another keyboard.
When I go to heat my tea up in the microwave [...] I just open the door, press "micro power", press "10s" three times and press "go".
...and that interface does something similar, but even more complex with incrementing counters, interacting event loops and so on. You don't really try to do mods quite as complicated to your microwave as you do your PC. If you ever wanted to, you'd find it
When I press the remote on my TV I need ONE button to change the channel, I don't have feed in the frequency, brightness, contrast and aspect ratio with about three attempts before I get my syntax right.
My TV remote probably has a simpler remote interface than yours. There's a number showing current channel by the screen. They keypad has a volume +/- control and a big red button that flips channel when pressed and switches it off when held (with a big mechanical "CLICK" as the power button toggles). I only use the boggleworthy video remote if I want to use the video. I set the VCR to channel 1, which the TV displays by default, as I thought I'd use its richer interface, but I don't. It's just an obstruction to watching programmes. I've been thinking about interfaces for years and I still sometimes don't recognise a bad interface very quickly. An interface that seems more complicated than it needs to be at first glance is my telephone. It has lots of buttons, arranged around the edge of the normal keypad. It has an LCD display. It has red indicator lights. I actually use most of these features, as I use my telephone in a certain way. The buttons down the left column are speed dial. The top control things like volume (nice when you use phones a lot), speaker and display. The right are other call-related features, like redial, hold and programming the speed dials. They're arranged fairly logically and easy to use raised light grey buttons on a black phone. The only control there I don't use much is the clock setter. I don't think other users like the phone much. There's a different phone with basically just the number pad on the other line with a programmed smart box that still lets me use the complicated features through hash-codes if I must. I don't use that much, but nearly everyone else does. Even though the basic phone task (pick up handset, dial number) is the same on both, people are put off by the extra buttons. It *looks* harder. Maybe this is why different applications for the same tasks will always happen. That, and "intuitive is what you're used to". -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
The message <39c00930403b82b560d00694038d24da@bouncing.localnet> from MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> contains these words: /snippetry/
When I go to heat my tea up in the microwave [...] I just open the door, press "micro power", press "10s" three times and press "go".
...and that interface does something similar, but even more complex with incrementing counters, interacting event loops and so on. You don't really try to do mods quite as complicated to your microwave as you do your PC. If you ever wanted to, you'd find it
/more snippetry/ And when I heat something in the microwave I turn the little knob to the setting I want, then turn the timer to the number of minutes I want it to heat. I like simplicity. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
Anthony Anson <tony.anson@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
The message <39c00930403b82b560d00694038d24da@bouncing.localnet> from MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> contains these words:
/snippetry/
When I go to heat my tea up in the microwave [...] I just open the door, press "micro power", press "10s" three times and press "go".
...and that interface does something similar, but even more complex with incrementing counters, interacting event loops and so on. You don't really try to do mods quite as complicated to your microwave as you do your PC. If you ever wanted to, you'd find it
/more snippetry/
And when I heat something in the microwave I turn the little knob to the setting I want, then turn the timer to the number of minutes I want it to heat.
I like simplicity.
<mutter class="completelyBaffled"> How have we ended up with a comparison to microwaves for a HTML editor? A microwave has only one real job, throwing microwaves at things... a graphical HTML editor needs to cope with idiots, specifications, more idiots, and yet needs a simple interface... sounds like moon on a stick wanting to me. If you're designing a multipage site, then, still, by far the easiest way is to design a template that the site will fit in then use one of the (hundreds) of applications that can merge the data with the template, and hey presto, much easiness, easy editing, easy everything... So, maybe, if the user had a set of predefined templates in this GUI editor, it could be made easier. If you want something with all the available power of css and html, then you're *NEVER* going to get a GUI editor to play nice and generate clean code. The closest this far is Amaya, which appears to be getting better over time :) HTML + CSS provides a more powerful set of instructions than you're average word processor... hell, using some of the presentation style stylesheets, you've basically got a typesetting language. It's just not ever going to be able to be bent to a 'simple' editor. Anyways - if you *REALLY* think there's a gap in the OSS world, that needs filling, why not suggest a project, set up a group somewhere to discuss it, start coding something that will fit the gap. Although, as has already been said, for the people that were previously mentioned, they need nothing more than Moz composer or OpenOffice.org's HTML editor. Good lord, that was a long muttering session. </mutter> And now, food, then erm, yes, pubs. Brett.
On Friday 05 Dec 2003 6:18 pm, Brett Parker wrote:
<mutter class="completelyBaffled"> How have we ended up with a comparison to microwaves for a HTML editor? A microwave has only one real job, throwing microwaves at things... a graphical HTML editor needs to cope with idiots, specifications, more idiots, and yet needs a simple interface...
I think you just answered you own question. For idiots read housewives, for specifications read recipes, for more idiots read kids... I rest my case (and exit for the garden shed PDQ) Ian
On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 14:05, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message <200312041326.28812.gt@pobox.com> from Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> contains these words:
He knows that 99% of viewers will be running IE and won't give a toss for the rest. He doesn't do it for the love of it; he has no concept of what makes tidy HTML but wants results NOW and preferably at little or no cost.
There I must disagree: many people run two or more browsers, and 1% is IMO an underestimate by a very large factor. Don't forget, that there are Mac, RISC, Commodore etc users out there as well as Windows-based ones, and of the Windows users, many have more than one browser. I have Firebird, Opera and Netscape on my Windows box, and only keep IE because it's cunningly built into the system.
I test my pages in Mozilla, Opera and Netscape, and I don't give a flying **** if they display in IE.
Hmm. People who are still running Netscape (4 or 6, or whatever they're up to now) have something wrong with them. I don't bother testing anything on 4 anymore. It's simply too utterly broken and old, and 6 is just Mozilla with lots of crap thrown in. Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say.
From a commercial stand point, not giving a toss how well IE renders a website is a serious mistake. From a personal stand point, I think it's just blinkered advocacy for something else that I think everybody could do without.
B. -- Rob Kendrick, Pepperfish Ltd. +44 (0)845 226 4146 www.pepperfish.net PGP signed or encrypted mail welcome Key ID: 3651D17A
On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 19:39, Rob Kendrick wrote:
Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say.
From a commercial stand point, not giving a toss how well IE renders a website is a serious mistake. From a personal stand point, I think it's just blinkered advocacy for something else that I think everybody could do without.
Two words - "Tabbed browsing" IE's interface/features haven't changed since 1995 and version 4. Every time I go to a client site and am forced to use IE, I find it really annoying browsing without tabs and being forced to use the back button all the time. IE on Linux is fine, but this Linux user wouldn't use it as his browser of choice...however, I do make sure that all my web-facing code works in IE as well as Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, and Netscape (not 4 though). It's really not that hard once you know the little quirks of all the browsers and their various bugs. Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design
On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 23:41, Matt Parker wrote:
Two words - "Tabbed browsing"
IE's interface/features haven't changed since 1995 and version 4.
Every time I go to a client site and am forced to use IE, I find it really annoying browsing without tabs and being forced to use the back button all the time.
I agree without tabbed browsing i feel cheated. Mozilla isn't that slow once it gets going(like a big rock at the top of a hill). Also if you just use mozilla-firebird, Gnome's Epiphany or KDE's browser you may find it alot faster. I don't see a need for IE on Linux and i don't like Normal Mozilla much either(like you say its abit slow). About the HTML editor... does Joe realy want to do anything fancy? Is OpenOffice.org or geosites webbuilder(its a java applet from what i remember) good enough for the kind of page that he is going to make? I agree that he shouldn't worry about what browser is going to be able to see his page(does anyone really look for other peoples family information sites?). - Dennis (Sorry Matt i always forget to change the "To:" line to alug)
On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 23:41, Matt Parker wrote:
IE's interface/features haven't changed since 1995 and version 4.
That's a little bit inconsistent. Windows 95 came with MSIE 2, for example. The feature set has changed significantly, while trying to keep the user interface similar.
IE on Linux is fine, but this Linux user wouldn't use it as his browser of choice...
Given the hundreds of Gecko based browser wrappers, if the MSIE engine were available on Linux as it is Windows, I'm sure there'd be loads of wrappers for it, which provide the features people want, like tabbed browsing.
however, I do make sure that all my web-facing code works in IE as well as Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, and Netscape (not 4 though). It's really not that hard once you know the little quirks of all the browsers and their various bugs.
I've found it just too difficult getting even simple stuff to render in a satisfying way in Safari/Konq, so I gave up. -- Rob Kendrick, Pepperfish Ltd. +44 (0)845 226 4146 www.pepperfish.net PGP signed or encrypted mail welcome Key ID: 3651D17A
On Thursday 04 December 2003 19:39, Rob Kendrick wrote:
Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say
I disagree I am running Mozilla Firebird 0.6 on my Linux machine and Opera on my Windows machine (last time I tried Firebird on a Windows machine the win32 version seemed broken) I now find it almost impossible to live with IE when I am forced to use another Windows machine now, in fact I was slightly shocked about how many popups there are now :o) Oh and working without tabbed browsing once you have become used to such a feature is damm near impossible, wait to see tabbed browsing in the next major release of IE. I find Firebird almost as quick as IE and Opera just that little bit quicker sometimes, as to compatability I have encountered only a tiny handfull of sites that wont work, no doubt most of them would work if I didn't refuse to change user agent strings, doing this makes those who monitor weblogs think there are less alternative browsers in popular use. I prefer them to see that somebody who may have been a potential customer got punted at the first page. What was the last version on Moz you tried, have you tried Phoenix / Firebird ?
Rob Kendrick wrote:
Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say.
I think you are unique, because with respect, that is total bollocks. IE hasn't been updated in years, and simply pales into insignificance against Opera and Mozilla 1.5 (neither of which is slow, BTW). There are two things I miss unspeakably when some brain-dead site forces me to use IE. 1) tabbed browsing, and 2) blocking pop-ups. QED. Cheers, Laurie. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Friday 05 December 2003 09:18, Laurie Brown wrote:
Rob Kendrick wrote:
Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say.
I think you are unique, because with respect, that is total bollocks. IE hasn't been updated in years, and simply pales into insignificance against Opera and Mozilla 1.5 (neither of which is slow, BTW).
There are two things I miss unspeakably when some brain-dead site forces me to use IE. 1) tabbed browsing, and 2) blocking pop-ups. QED.
Cheers, Laurie.
"With respect", opinions are just that; subjective and individual, not to be labelled perjoratively. It's one of the perceived weaknesses of Linux; if it's so good why do some of its proponents have to defend/promote it so vehemently? Mac and Amiga users, by contrast, smile serenely, confident of their wisdom without feeling the need to ram it down people's throats. (Windows users know they're right, of course, but haven't a clue why. They just follow the herd.) -- GT
On 2003-12-05 10:16:05 +0000 Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> wrote:
"With respect", opinions are just that; subjective and individual, not to be labelled perjoratively.
<high-ground> I think maybe the OP didn't read my recent message about not expressing opinions as if they were fact. Coo, it's high up here. <fx:vertigo/></high-ground>
It's one of the perceived weaknesses of Linux; if it's so good why do some of its proponents have to defend/promote it so vehemently?
There is no single marketing organisation for it. At least in the early days, the only way to be able to use GNU/Linux at work was to defend/promote it yourself, as your boss wouldn't have been won over by the big UK marketing spend of Walnut Creek. I don't think that the proponents are a weakness. They're a strength, basically, but sometimes the language and style lacks some polish. Hey, that should be endearing in small moderate doses. We're not marketing men. We're real people in the real world. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
I have to agree with Laurie and think tha you are...unique. IE is not a good piece of software. One of its major UI shortcomings is the pop-up issue (Do you really want an X10 camera?). Another engineering flaw is the fact that it uses a lot of DLLs that can cause problems with other software after upgrading because of some security update. What really irks me though is other applications insisting on having the latest IE installed just so that their installer can show you nice adware as you install, or for their documentation (Symantec and Visual Studio are examples). So even though I do not use IE I have to keep upgrading it. Give me Mozilla anytime ;I find it to be anything but slow. Chris. Laurie Brown wrote:
Rob Kendrick wrote:
Am I unique in the Linux users world who pines of an IE for x86 Linux? Mozilla's all good and dandy, but it's /slow/ and in my experience, horribly unstable. IE by contrast is simple, and blindingly quick. It's actually a superb browser on balance, no matter what people say.
I think you are unique, because with respect, that is total bollocks. IE hasn't been updated in years, and simply pales into insignificance against Opera and Mozilla 1.5 (neither of which is slow, BTW).
There are two things I miss unspeakably when some brain-dead site forces me to use IE. 1) tabbed browsing, and 2) blocking pop-ups. QED.
Cheers, Laurie.
On 2003-12-04 09:44:44 +0000 Graham Trott <gt@pobox.com> wrote:
graphical approach to anything, whether it does the job better or not. Once persuaded of the benefits of manual mark-up they're surely capable, but if they're only doing lightweight HTML the problem is in making that first step.
The concepts aren't really hugely different from the graphical approach. I think there's a lot of mileage to be had from the three editors which do the graphical/code switchable view quite well: Mozilla Composer, Amaya and QEmacs. (Actually, I'd like QEmacs to be able to do more editing in graphical mode, but have no time to write it.) Even editors like Bluefish and Emacs-with-W3 which use different windows/frames for the code and render windows can be very useful. The basic problem is still that HTML (properly xhtml) is not really capable of being WYSIWYG. Once you start throwing floating and fixed blocks around, you do need to have some idea of flowing and how layout works. Get the page layout right, or it will break for some people. Even I sometimes break things ;-) (especially on "free" sites where I experiment a little ;-) ). I will generally try to put it right. OK, you can say that you just don't care about the people who can't see it, but why publish xhtml then? Why not upload files for specific applications? Clearly, there was some ambition for it to be widely readable when you started the idea... and it's not really hard to do. Sadly, some tools do make it harder than it should be. Sometimes, the ambition of accessibility gets sacrificed for the editor to get a pretty interface. Needs of the one versus needs of the many and all that. The pretty interface often means that people only start to learn page layout when they want to do something complicated, often under pressure. That's not a good place to start. Looking at the other tools mentioned, it seems that some GUI web design tools are worse than them. An automatic car has some gear selection options, dishwashers can be jumped around their programmes manually and AV kit with remotes usually have on-board interfaces too. The reality is that the "easier" interfaces don't meet all needs, so the other ones are still mostly present. What's the lesson here? All web design toolkits should work well with code editors, perhaps? I don't think spewing reams of unnecessary JavaScript, <table> and <font> tags into invalid code meets that. Maybe there are some good GUI advanced design tools which do live nicely with it. While mentioning these, GIMP has a nice Plugin -> Web -> Image map tool. Doesn't produce valid xhtml yet, but tidy kicks it into shape. There's also Guillotine in there. Just thought you'd like to know, in case they're not in the toolkits of any web developers yet. Other related points: Mozilla Firebird here and not crashed in a long time; I think tabs should be a window manager feature, not in every application, but I'm not backing that up with code yet. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
On 2003-12-05 10:30:11 +0000 MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote: <snip />
The basic problem is still that HTML (properly xhtml) is not really capable of being WYSIWYG. Once you start throwing floating and fixed blocks around, you do need to have some idea of flowing and how layout works. Get the page layout right, or it will break for some people. Even I sometimes break things ;-) (especially on "free" sites where I experiment a little ;-) ). I will generally try to put it right.
I think that you'll find your general problems with experimentation are mostly IEs very poor CSS support, and IEs very poor PNG support. Maybe someone should suggest to M$ that they should base IE on the Gecko engine... then see how long it takes for the web developers to fix the websites ;) Cheers, Brett
On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 10:30:11 +0000 MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
The basic problem is still that HTML (properly xhtml) is not really capable of being WYSIWYG. Once you start throwing floating and fixed blocks around, you do need to have some idea of flowing and how layout works. Get the page layout right, or it will break for some people. Even I sometimes break things ;-) (especially on "free" sites where I experiment a little ;-) ). I will generally try to put it right.
Brilliant thread this. Have to agree with everything MJR says (otherwise he comes round and beats me up, but mainly because he's hit the nail on the head! :o) ). I've had discussions like this several times in my career and I don't think there's any sort of general approach that works for everyone. It really is horses for courses. Mark's point that HTML is a programming language is spot on (Hypertext Markup Language), as there does come a point where you have to get to grips with the actual code. For some languages this is sooner that others. e.g. imagine trying to create a WYSIWYG interface for perl? I bet someone's probably had a go. However I use Delphi and JBuilder regularly and you could regard the IDEs they have as a sort of WYSIWYG approach. It's even possible to put together simple applications just by connecting the components together (but often, to do anything more useful you still have to cut code at some point). And I've yet to find any WYSIWYG tools that deals with CSS in a way that I've found useful. But it does depend on who's doing the coding and for what purpose. If someone just wants to put together a simple home page for their personal web site then WYSIWYG tools are great because it hides the complexity of what's actually happening from them. And that's what they need. But if, like me, you are trying to put together interactive e-commerce websites all day then there comes a point where WYSIWYG just gets in the way and you need to build the HTML by hand. However in the initial phases it is often useful to use a WYSIWYG tool (if you can find one) to put a basic skeleton together just to speed up the initial coding of the basic code structures (and that applies to any programming language). In the end it all depends on the background of the person using the language and what they are trying to achieve. WYSIWYG = what you saw is what you got! :o) Keith ____________ "Just keep banging the rocks together guys." - Douglas Adams
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. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
MJ Ray wrote: [SNIP]
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?
I prefer a coding assistant, like Homesite. It gives one the ability to edit the code, and useful help with syntax, tags, etc. Good tool... WYSIWYG is bollox... Cheers, Laurie. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
A true "WYSIWYG [HTML] editor" is impossible.
This seems to have met with general agreement, and a polarization into those who are willing to sacrifice (standards-compliant) HTML for WYSIWYG, and those who are willing to sacrifice WYSIWYG for standards-compliant HTML. I personally either code my HTML by hand in emacs, or code LaTeX by hand in emacs, then use LaTeX2HTML. However, I'm not sure about the "impossible," and wonder if you could explain it.. is the argument as follows? The point of HTML is that the reader, not the author, decides how pages are formatted and presented (I don't really understand CSS, but I guess they amend this a bit.) Once one gives an author WYSIWYG, it is impossible to resist the tempatation to extend "what you see is what you get" to "what you see is what you (perhaps unintentionally) impose on everyone else," and include formatting information in the HTML, which tends to break its standards compliance. If so, I think resisting that temptation is merely difficult, not impossible, although this is not me volunteering code ;-). Do the favourable comments about Mozilla Composer mean that it's achieved this resistance? On the other hand, is there demand among authors for documents on the WWW where they get full control of the formatting and presentation, in which case what we're looking for might not be WYSIWYG HTML editor, but a WYSIWYG [some other reasonably portable format] editor? -- Dan Hatton <http://www.bib.hatton.btinternet.co.uk/dan/>
Dan Hatton wrote:
On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
A true "WYSIWYG [HTML] editor" is impossible. I'm not sure about the "impossible," and wonder if you could explain it.. is the argument as follows? <snip>
If so, I think resisting that temptation is merely difficult, not impossible, although this is not me volunteering code ;-).
My original intention of semi-starting this topic wasn't really anything to do with HTML. It was about scratching itches in Open Source Software development, but with the problem - Who scratches the itches that the developers don't have, but other people do? Where's the incentive for programmers to write programs they don't need but other people do - within the Open Source development model. It stemmed from comments people who I've tried to pursuade to switch to Linux have made about usability, and me wondering whether these problems were not down to bad software design, but simply the fundamental nature of FOSS. However, I am interested in the WYSIWIG vs. plain text interfaces debate in web page creation. Why is it that a WYSIWYG editor is impossible? Is this because what you see isn't necessarily what you get? If this is the case then I think I was asking the wrong question. I appreciate that whatever I use to make web pages, they're going to appear different on different operating systems, browsers, resolutions etc. - but I don't see the need to type out all the code for a language which translates into visual form quite literally. What I perhaps meant was a GUI, not necessarily WYSIWYG. However, I do mean more than a button you press which inserts <b></b> into your code on screen for example. I'd prefer a system more like modern word processors where you highlight your text and press a bold button or Ctrl-b, and it appears bold - but hiding the tags from view. You insert a table and can drag the sides to resize it. You can drag a picture from one cell to another in a table. That kind of thing. This isn't about seeing what it's going to look like in a browser, it's about being able to visualise what you're doing to the page - speeding up productivity - at least for static HTML. I'm no master programmer by *any* stretch of the imagination, but I don't understand why it would be impossible to make graphical tools like this translate into clean, neat W3C compliant HTML that is constantly tidying itself by indenting, getting rid of duplicate tags and highlighting problems and missing attributes as you work. Difficult, yes, but impossible? Do the
favourable comments about Mozilla Composer mean that it's achieved this resistance?
I personally find Mozilla Composer quite limiting compared to tools I've used in Windows. Since this topic started I've dowloaded the new version of OpenOffice which contains a complex web page editor. This has more like the feature list I'm looking for, but I still don't like the interface at all and the code it generates is very messy. From the above observations it certainly seems that using a GUI and generating clean code are fundamentally opposing concepts. But does this have to be the case? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only
On Sunday 07 Dec 2003 6:28 pm, Ben Francis wrote:
This isn't about seeing what it's going to look like in a browser, it's about being able to visualise what you're doing to the page - speeding up productivity - at least for static HTML.
Amaya makes a fair stab at this www.w3.org/Amaya/ . Cheers, BJ
On 2003-12-07 18:28:54 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
[...] Where's the incentive for programmers to write programs they don't need but other people do - within the Open Source development model.
Money. Fame. Charity.
I don't see the need to type out all the code for a language which translates into visual form quite literally.
It isn't a 1-1 mapping, which is the problem with the pseudo-WYSIWYG tools. People forget it's not 1-1 and do swanky visual effects which work for them and fail for others. I think there are two major improvements that could be made to the current crop of tools: 1. multiviews: different basic CSS default settings, so you can see how the page looks for different readers. Possibly try to emulate the defaults of popular browers and systems with limited CSS support. 2. refactor: spot common redundant markup and eliminate it. At a simple level, remove "<b></b>" strings that are common in word-processor-produced code. At a more complex level, do what you said, more like tidy on speed. I'd like someone to extend qemacs to allow xhtml tag input in its graphical editing mode. At the moment, you need both code and display modes (html-mode and xml-mode). It's not bad. I've thrown a screenshot onto gopher://g.towers.org.uk/g/ss.png (9k) (or if you must http://g.towers.org.uk:70/ss.png ) -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
MJ Ray wrote:
On 2003-12-07 18:28:54 +0000 Ben Francis <ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
[...] Where's the incentive for programmers to write programs they don't need but other people do - within the Open Source development model. Money. Fame. Charity.
OK, point taken.
I don't see the need to type out all the code for a language which translates into visual form quite literally.
It isn't a 1-1 mapping, which is the problem with the pseudo-WYSIWYG tools. People forget it's not 1-1 and do swanky visual effects which work for them and fail for others. I think there are two major improvements that could be made to the current crop of tools:
1. multiviews: different basic CSS default settings, so you can see how the page looks for different readers. Possibly try to emulate the defaults of popular browers and systems with limited CSS support.
Sounds like a good idea, not sure I've seen this done before. This way people can see how the rest of the world is actually probably going to see their web page - possible giving an incentive to use better code. The main reason why people use nasty HTML seems to be that they view it in their own web browser, it looks fine so they assume it will look fine for everyone else.
2. refactor: spot common redundant markup and eliminate it. At a simple level, remove "<b></b>" strings that are common in word-processor-produced code. At a more complex level, do what you said, more like tidy on speed.
This one is an essential, I think.
I'd like someone to extend qemacs to allow xhtml tag input in its graphical editing mode. At the moment, you need both code and display modes (html-mode and xml-mode). It's not bad. I've thrown a screenshot onto gopher://g.towers.org.uk/g/ss.png (9k) (or if you must http://g.towers.org.uk:70/ss.png )
Wish I had the programming skills, this would be a great project to take up/contribute to. I've also taken a closer look at Amaya, since you said it seems to generate very neat code. I admit, I don't like the interface much either in its current form, but it's by no means the worst I've seen. I like the concept of browsing and editing in the same space. Not sure I'd want to use it for all my browsing though! -- Ben "tola" Francis 00101010 tola ^/. http://hippygeek.co.uk mailto:tola_at_imen.org.uk opinions expressed are of the voices in my head only
On 2003-12-07 17:42:18 +0000 Dan Hatton <dan.hatton@btinternet.com> wrote:
I personally either code my HTML by hand in emacs, or code LaTeX by hand in emacs, then use LaTeX2HTML.
LaTeX2HTML is a partial reimplementation of LaTeX in perl, I think. Any reason not to use tex4ht?
The point of HTML is that the reader, not the author, decides how pages are formatted and presented (I don't really understand CSS, but I guess they amend this a bit.)
Stop just there. That's the argument in a nut shell. The reader should be able to override nearly all display choices. The browser platform features also influence the presentation. They may even be using audio presentation instead of video. Once you get a tool that encourages you to draw little green boxes on the screen in the belief that all readers will see little green boxes, you get some very strange reader experiences. Instructions like "choose from the links in the little green box" doesn't mean much. You get similar (but less entertaining) problems from JavaScript-only navigation and other things encouraged by certain "web design" software. Finally, some of them produce invalid code which further damages the presentation. No, it's really not WYSIWYG out there. Mozilla Composer gets some nice comments because it's a GUI markup tool rather than a web design program and produces almost-sane code. The developers also seem willing to fix problems as they find them. Amaya produces even better code, but users seem not to like the interface. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
On Sunday 07 December 2003 17:42, Dan Hatton wrote:
On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
A true "WYSIWYG [HTML] editor" is impossible.
This seems to have met with general agreement, and a polarization into those who are willing to sacrifice (standards-compliant) HTML for WYSIWYG, and those who are willing to sacrifice WYSIWYG for standards-compliant HTML. I personally either code my HTML by hand in emacs, or code LaTeX by hand in emacs, then use LaTeX2HTML.
This path leads to infinity in either direction. At one end we all get to do word processing using text markup rather than Open Office / MS Word etc. Few would advocate that, yet GUI word processors are almost as unpredictable as HTML RAD tools. Then there's assembly-language for programming, on the grounds that no compiler can do the job properly. True, as it happens, and coding in assembler can be great fun, but most of us are willing to accept the trade-offs in the interests of getting the job done some time this century. At the other end is a fuzzy, sloppy, ToyTown of bright primary colours where little effort is required but results are imprecise and unpredictable. Word processing using voice-to-text and programming by dragging icons around a screen. You can be anywhere along this path, even in different places at different times and for different kinds of work. What's important is that you have the freedom to choose and the willingness to accept the limitations of your choices; the way they affect yourself and those who are the consumers of your work. When I first encountered (and was smitten by) the Mac in 1984, many of my co-workers were sniffy about what they saw as unnecessary eye-candy. On one occasion I was even asked by my customer not to waste so much time producing pretty word-processed documents; every one else was doing plain text, often on typewriters (historical note; a mechanical device for creating textual images on paper). I and my fellow converts were spending no more time; we just got our message across better/quicker with MacWrite. I think there's still a lingering suspicion of GUI tools; a kind of Luddism that's found a natural home in corners of the Linux world. Nothing wrong with that; everyone needs a home and it's great that Linux can provide it. But we don't all have to live the same way. The great majority, both washed and un-washed, want GUI tools and see arguments about quality and coding style - and the command line in general - as a kind of hair-shirt puritanism. -- GT Hey - we have ordinary Joe; how about green-screen loving, GUI-hating Ned? (Duck)
participants (17)
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Anthony Anson -
Ben Francis -
Brett Parker -
Chris Vardy -
Dan Hatton -
Dennis Dryden -
Graham Trott -
IanBell -
John Woodard -
Keith Watson -
Laurie Brown -
Matt Parker -
MJ Ray -
Rob Kendrick -
Rob Kendrick -
Roberto Puricelli -
Wayne Stallwood