With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term.
I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown. Similarly, switching from Word to LaTeX was an improvement for most tasks once I got used to it.
Unfortunately, LaTeX has a bunch of its own shortcomings not related to it's non-WYSIWYG nature. For common tasks, I think going from markdown to LaTeX is ideal. Markdown itself is far from perfect, but it's the best compromise I've found especially with Pandoc's extensions.
So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist (like whizzy TeX and AucTeX's previews), so it should be much easier to put together than a full WYSIWYG editor. More productive, too.
If have come to greatly appreciate Lyx' [1] WYSIWYMean approach. When you are mostly writing code or plaintext markdown is great, but if you have to typeset and edit a lot of formulas using Tex quickly becomes a pain. Lyx allows you to edit them graphically with the standard Tex syntax and displays them while you type which is a huge improvement to just rendering them after you have finished it. Unfortunately the videos I've found online all heavily use the mouse interface to choose subscript, special characters etc. which doesn't do Lyx' real efficiency via keyboard shortcuts justice.
If you want to try it yourself: The most important commands are [ctrl]+[m] to enter math mode (or [ctrl]+[shift]+[m] for display formulas) and [alt]+[m] for a lot of math shortcuts, specifically [alt]+[m] and then any bracket to open matching size adapting brackets of this type. To enter a sum for example press "[ctr]+[shift]+[m]\sum[space]_k=1[space]^\infty[space][space]\frac[space]1[down arrow]k^2[space][space][space]". The shortcut [alt]+[p] and then [space] to choose the paragraphs meaning (section, itemize, standard, …) is also a huge productivity boost.
>With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term.
That --in the extend that it happens-- is a byproduct of the limitations of current WYSIWYG editors, not something inherent in the idea of WYSIWYG editing.
It's not like we had a lot of brainstorming and innovating solutions competing in this area (in fact, there are only 3, all too similar, major products: Word, Pages and Open Office, of which one has 90% of the users).
Second, what's "inconvenient" and "distracting" for one user, is a must and an inspiration for another.
Not to mention there are several different use cases for WYSIWYG editing, and LaTeX style editing doesn't cover them all. For example it's dreadful for quick experimentation with placement and formatting of small, disparate elements (basically, anything not according to the "spec").
>I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown.
WYSIWYG's strong point is not small website comments.
You might want to give plain TeX a try--it's surprisingly lightweight (once you learn how to change font sizes and/or decide not to care). A lot of the bloat comes from LaTeX and using 'eplain' will give you most of the crossreferencing and bibliography commands (if you need it).
Running latexmk -pvc in a separate terminal will give you rebuilt dvis on the fly (or pdfs). AucTeX can generate inline previews for plain tex just as well as LaTeX.
Of course, org mode is the standard recommendation for "emacs based markdown replacement with inline math previews"
>So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist
So org-mode has you covered there, basically. Org isn't markdown, but it's close (and full of tons of note-taking features), and you can do inline latex with live preview in org-mode. I use it for notes all the time.
> I don't know how to use Org mode, and don't know what it does (it seems to do so many things), but if it displays through Emacs then there are many formatting features that it can't display in a WYSIWYG fashion like Libre Office.
I can't believe Stallman doesn't know how to use Org mode. If he is interested in selling people on Emacs, then Org mode is one of the killer features for the presentation. I don't expect him to know something he has no use for, but he should know the most popular components in the Emacs ecosystem. Org mode is one of the only reasons I started using Emacs.
I completely believe it. First of all, Stallman isn't known for hiding his opinions, or masking his version of the truth.
But beyond that, Stallman has often failed or refused to use technologies that the rest of us take for granted. Years ago, I spoke with him about a proposed bill in the US Congress that would have affected intellectual property laws. (I can't remember the specifics.) At some point, Stallman, who had strongly encouraged people to contact their representatives to oppose the bill, told me that he hadn't actually read it. I told him that it was on the Web, to which he responded, "I don't surf the Web."
Now, I can understand being against certain browsers, servers, and operating systems. But to flat-out refuse to read things on the Web struck me as counterproductive. I don't know if he has changed his attitude toward the Web in the years since, but assume that when he says he doesn't use a certain technology, he means it.
I've seen Programming teachers requiring emacs for a course while not using anything it has to offer, not even as a programmable editor, and even displaying signs of anti-abstraction (no regularity in actions for a sequence of identical text modification tasks).
Some of the people responding are steering the discussion to a layout language with a preview window. I don't know if they are doing it because they prefer to work in such a user-hostile mode (I did this for a book, in Eclipse. Ugh.), or if they think this is a more sane goal.
WYSIWYG has its own issues. most users of word processors have no idea that paragraphs are objects in an object model, but the command structure only becomes clear when you realize that. Most users just hack at a document it until it looks right enough. At the really diabolical end of the spectrum I could show you an Ericsson documentation template that manages to manifest dozens of bugs in Word, laying in wait to eat your previous hour's work. I'm sure you have inherited documents like that.
It's all more or less a kludge, and WYSIWYG never is quite, nor is it real direct manipulation. At best it is something like "moderately friendly visual document CAD, if you get the trick behind the slick appearance."
If not quite the Correct Answer, it might be the Best Available Answer.
My mother used to be a Linotype ninja, blazing thru the sunday paper's ad inserts. The user input language was a page description language, little different from PostScript or HP's PCL (or HPGL/2). While modern systems are more accessible, I've not seen a system since that matched that concision and productivity.
I loved the precise control of WordPerfect (reveal codes) and FrameMaker (parametric styles). I can't comment on modern InDesign (stopped around version 2), but early on it was not considered a feature complete replacement for FrameMaker.
People speak highly of LaTex. I've not used it for real work.
I've done my share of UI, scenegraph, layout engines, plotter/print drivers, prepress / imposition, etc.
I gave up trying to integrate general purpose constraints systems into layouts. Too many edge cases, hard to debug. I now believe layouts heuristics should be implemented imperatively.
So I created DesignGridLayout, which captures grid based rules for UIs in a "fluent" API (aka method chaining). https://designgridlayout.java.net/examples.html (The awesome Jean-Francois Poilpret has maintained, extended the project for years.)
Though the box model sucks, I haven't yet given up on some mythical, simple scenegraphs + typography + content hybrid. I still don't know what that'll look like.
I would not say it is naive. I wonder if it is an itch Stallman has had for 25 years, but it is certainly an itch I have. Not for me, I would do perfectly well without word processed documents, but for customers and coworkers, they like PDF if not powerpoint or MSWord documents.
For now, I have edited and generated them with reStructured Text, but the workflow is not entirely satisfactory (and I don't feel like dipping into python to improve things there, I would rather write rst document preprocessors in lisp when possible).
Another aspect is that if we improve the graphic abilities of emacs, it may be easier and faster to implement chrome like lighttable to attract newbies. Sublime Text probably has capted a percentage of users who would have chosen emacs, if it could have competed in the esthetic plane. Also, it is a little regretable to be limited to ascii art for the few diagrams that are sometimes needed in the documentations we write as programmers. If we could edit vectorial graphics in emacs, it would be great (we can already render svg, but perhaps thru an external program).
So I would not say naive, but on the contrary, it may condensate a critical mass of itches to motivate some scratches.
Quite simply, explicit markup makes it very easy to see what formatting will be applied to what text.
WYSIWYG only shows you the end result, with no clean way to see how you got there. Was this font introduced because of some theme? Was it applied because of some toolbar button? Is it the result of some template? Was it copied from somewhere else, thereby baking someone else's theming into the copied text?
These are the questions that make WYSIWYG so confusing. These are the things that make explicit markup so straight forward. I don't think you can have WYSIWYG without the confusion or while maintaining the power of explicit markup.
If anything, Markdown or RST or Org provide a compelling middle ground: Markup is still explicit but minimal, and styling tries to come as close as possible to WYSIWYG without sacrificing control.
This, I think, is a far more compelling route to take than WYSIWYG or LaTeX-style explicit markup.
i have read literally hundreds of threads discussing
this general issue over the years, and i can say that
this comment right here has come as close to the heart
of the problem as any other one i've read in that time.
congratulations, derbasti, on your observational oxyopia.
I prefer the paradigm where you edit in something like markdown but the live preview is available on the right hand side or down below the text. All it needs is a catchy acronym.
The controls for the text should be immediate in the text, that makes sense and is the most powerful implementation. But you have to see what it all means and be able to identify problems along the way when you make a mistake & know what your markdown is creating. Otherwise you type it out and notice that you forgot to force 15 line breaks.
Stallman lacks a coherent vision. He has an end goal but he really doesn't have a great plan to get there. It's really frustrating. Emacs could be a lot better. For instance, it has taken forever to get a high-performance Lisp working inside of Emacs. I think Guile is partly there?
Anyway, since we'll all be long dead before his plan starts to work, I think the better solution is to support inexpensive software. For example, I pay for Sublime Text. Recently I bought PixelMator and Sketch, and I'm planning on learning how to use them soon. :-)
Sure it would be great if Free Software ruled but faster change comes with a paid ecosystem. The real problem was that software was expensive. If it's simply inexpensive, we'll get most of what we need.
You misunderstand the point of the FSF. It's free as in freedom, not free as in no money. The whole thing started because rms wanted to modify a printer driver to give functionality their last printer had. He wasn't being stingy, he just wanted his workflow back. The FSF has no problems with charging for software, they have no objection to Red Hat, for instance, charging for the GPL Linux kernel (although they have other problems with Red Hat). The FSF is concerned with users having access to the source, not with everyone being users or non-users having access to the source.
The real problem was that software was expensive??
Also, I don't know how much of the success/failure of FOSS can be pinned on RMS. He's just one man. The plan was never for the entire movement to be dependent on him.
Is it that Stallman lacks a manager's mindset of breaking the vision into manageable pieces, and then delegating them out? Or is it that this is so against the ethos, that he couldn't make it happen with a volunteer workforce?
This is the epitome of the challenge of open source.
RMS whines : "25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing. That is why we added text properties and variable width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
Could people please start working on the features that are needed?"
And he's 100% accurate, it has been 25 years, and there is an open source WYSIWYG word processor, called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. He wants someone to do the work to make his tool of choice into something which can do what he wants to do in it.
A lot of people go this way, and we see several tools that all do variations on the same thing in their own peculiar way (Vive du choix!) but that means it is really really hard to figure out how to get somethings done when each set of tools rely on their own set of other tools.
The nice thing about Cathedrals is that you know what is expected of you :-)
I've always felt it was this kind of thinking that puts Emacs at odds with the UNIX philosophy of do one thing well. Unless your one thing is everything-you-can-do-with-text.
Some projects are like that, because the synergy from a core functionality works well with added features. Its like how a window manager has menus and keyboard shortcuts even if its main purpose is to draw windows, or session managers are normally full working desktops.
Emacs do exactly one thing well (editing text), and a bunch of other things sort of OK. The sort of OK stuff is there because their core, they are about editing text. Like with an IDE, if the editing is crap, the ide is crap. As such, all IDE's require a good text editor to start with before they can do anything well.
Emacs is a conscious computer virus with the aim of hollowing Unix out function by function, eventually to overthrow it. It's like a vampire: a shadow of what made it beautiful in life (elisp vs the old lisp machines), sustained mostly by blood (of its new users) and its long-term goal of revenge.
Yes I think Emacs' philosophy is at odds with UNIX philosophy; I also think it's /superior to/ UNIX philosophy. It sounds like you take UNIX philosophy to be gospel, and deviation from that to be incorrect. I'm not trying now to convert you to Emacs' philosophy. Rather I think there are a lot of people who only know UNIX philosophy, when in fact there are alternatives.
emacs is entirely and wholy at odds with the UNIX philosophy, indeed. emacs is a Lisp Machine, running in a VM on unix. Read the Unix Hater Handbook for more info.
Could people please start working on the features that are needed?
As someone aware of gnu, but not an active participant, how effective are requests like this? Does "Can people start working on this?" actually get results? I'm curious as this gets to the heart of why they may have trouble finishing things. (You can't toss money at someone to do the dirty work)
I'm coming with an open mind, and would like to hear either side of this.
I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet.
However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in.
It would be kinda nice to see people work on those type of things.
The thing about "What You See Is What You Get" is that you have to define 'where you get it'. You have to define 'it'.
The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc. It sounds like RMS means his desktop/laptop computer. On the upside, you have a user archetype: Richard Stallman. A good product manager would start building up a list of user stories:
- As Richard Stallman, I want *goal* so that *benefit*.
Neat. Really. I really want to use emacs but I find it hard to justify learning all it's intricacies when I'm only going to use it at certain times while programming.
This kills two birds with one stone, gets me off MS Office and into keybind heaven
I like enriched-mode for simple markup purposes, like bolding headers. It's nothing spectacular, but makes an on-screen document that much more readable, and it doesn't add that much bulk to a text file, just a few extra markup directives.
It's easy to use, too. Select the text, ALT-o b
= bold, and so forth.
Still, a true WYSIWYG editing mode would be cool once in a while. Although, it's not that much trouble to select text and paste into a nearby LibreOffice window for true formatting.
[+] [-] tikhonj|12 years ago|reply
I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown. Similarly, switching from Word to LaTeX was an improvement for most tasks once I got used to it.
Unfortunately, LaTeX has a bunch of its own shortcomings not related to it's non-WYSIWYG nature. For common tasks, I think going from markdown to LaTeX is ideal. Markdown itself is far from perfect, but it's the best compromise I've found especially with Pandoc's extensions.
So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist (like whizzy TeX and AucTeX's previews), so it should be much easier to put together than a full WYSIWYG editor. More productive, too.
[+] [-] Perseids|12 years ago|reply
If you want to try it yourself: The most important commands are [ctrl]+[m] to enter math mode (or [ctrl]+[shift]+[m] for display formulas) and [alt]+[m] for a lot of math shortcuts, specifically [alt]+[m] and then any bracket to open matching size adapting brackets of this type. To enter a sum for example press "[ctr]+[shift]+[m]\sum[space]_k=1[space]^\infty[space][space]\frac[space]1[down arrow]k^2[space][space][space]". The shortcut [alt]+[p] and then [space] to choose the paragraphs meaning (section, itemize, standard, …) is also a huge productivity boost.
[1] http://www.lyx.org/WhatIsLyX
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
That --in the extend that it happens-- is a byproduct of the limitations of current WYSIWYG editors, not something inherent in the idea of WYSIWYG editing.
It's not like we had a lot of brainstorming and innovating solutions competing in this area (in fact, there are only 3, all too similar, major products: Word, Pages and Open Office, of which one has 90% of the users).
Second, what's "inconvenient" and "distracting" for one user, is a must and an inspiration for another.
Not to mention there are several different use cases for WYSIWYG editing, and LaTeX style editing doesn't cover them all. For example it's dreadful for quick experimentation with placement and formatting of small, disparate elements (basically, anything not according to the "spec").
>I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown.
WYSIWYG's strong point is not small website comments.
[+] [-] pseut|12 years ago|reply
Of course, org mode is the standard recommendation for "emacs based markdown replacement with inline math previews"
[+] [-] ezequiel-garzon|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.texmacs.org
[+] [-] dcalacci|12 years ago|reply
So org-mode has you covered there, basically. Org isn't markdown, but it's close (and full of tons of note-taking features), and you can do inline latex with live preview in org-mode. I use it for notes all the time.
[+] [-] nova|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] computer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catmanjan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shorel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gexla|12 years ago|reply
I can't believe Stallman doesn't know how to use Org mode. If he is interested in selling people on Emacs, then Org mode is one of the killer features for the presentation. I don't expect him to know something he has no use for, but he should know the most popular components in the Emacs ecosystem. Org mode is one of the only reasons I started using Emacs.
[+] [-] reuven|12 years ago|reply
But beyond that, Stallman has often failed or refused to use technologies that the rest of us take for granted. Years ago, I spoke with him about a proposed bill in the US Congress that would have affected intellectual property laws. (I can't remember the specifics.) At some point, Stallman, who had strongly encouraged people to contact their representatives to oppose the bill, told me that he hadn't actually read it. I told him that it was on the Web, to which he responded, "I don't surf the Web."
Now, I can understand being against certain browsers, servers, and operating systems. But to flat-out refuse to read things on the Web struck me as counterproductive. I don't know if he has changed his attitude toward the Web in the years since, but assume that when he says he doesn't use a certain technology, he means it.
[+] [-] rout39574|12 years ago|reply
Org-mode is fantastic, but a very, very recent addition to the Emacs cosmology.
[+] [-] agumonkey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecspike|12 years ago|reply
The ability to embed code to generate a diagram is clutch.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
Some of the people responding are steering the discussion to a layout language with a preview window. I don't know if they are doing it because they prefer to work in such a user-hostile mode (I did this for a book, in Eclipse. Ugh.), or if they think this is a more sane goal.
WYSIWYG has its own issues. most users of word processors have no idea that paragraphs are objects in an object model, but the command structure only becomes clear when you realize that. Most users just hack at a document it until it looks right enough. At the really diabolical end of the spectrum I could show you an Ericsson documentation template that manages to manifest dozens of bugs in Word, laying in wait to eat your previous hour's work. I'm sure you have inherited documents like that.
It's all more or less a kludge, and WYSIWYG never is quite, nor is it real direct manipulation. At best it is something like "moderately friendly visual document CAD, if you get the trick behind the slick appearance."
[+] [-] specialist|12 years ago|reply
aka digital typesetting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Digital_era
If not quite the Correct Answer, it might be the Best Available Answer.
My mother used to be a Linotype ninja, blazing thru the sunday paper's ad inserts. The user input language was a page description language, little different from PostScript or HP's PCL (or HPGL/2). While modern systems are more accessible, I've not seen a system since that matched that concision and productivity.
I loved the precise control of WordPerfect (reveal codes) and FrameMaker (parametric styles). I can't comment on modern InDesign (stopped around version 2), but early on it was not considered a feature complete replacement for FrameMaker.
People speak highly of LaTex. I've not used it for real work.
I've done my share of UI, scenegraph, layout engines, plotter/print drivers, prepress / imposition, etc.
I gave up trying to integrate general purpose constraints systems into layouts. Too many edge cases, hard to debug. I now believe layouts heuristics should be implemented imperatively.
So I created DesignGridLayout, which captures grid based rules for UIs in a "fluent" API (aka method chaining). https://designgridlayout.java.net/examples.html (The awesome Jean-Francois Poilpret has maintained, extended the project for years.)
Though the box model sucks, I haven't yet given up on some mythical, simple scenegraphs + typography + content hybrid. I still don't know what that'll look like.
[+] [-] informatimago|12 years ago|reply
For now, I have edited and generated them with reStructured Text, but the workflow is not entirely satisfactory (and I don't feel like dipping into python to improve things there, I would rather write rst document preprocessors in lisp when possible).
Another aspect is that if we improve the graphic abilities of emacs, it may be easier and faster to implement chrome like lighttable to attract newbies. Sublime Text probably has capted a percentage of users who would have chosen emacs, if it could have competed in the esthetic plane. Also, it is a little regretable to be limited to ascii art for the few diagrams that are sometimes needed in the documentations we write as programmers. If we could edit vectorial graphics in emacs, it would be great (we can already render svg, but perhaps thru an external program).
So I would not say naive, but on the contrary, it may condensate a critical mass of itches to motivate some scratches.
[+] [-] Derbasti|12 years ago|reply
WYSIWYG only shows you the end result, with no clean way to see how you got there. Was this font introduced because of some theme? Was it applied because of some toolbar button? Is it the result of some template? Was it copied from somewhere else, thereby baking someone else's theming into the copied text?
These are the questions that make WYSIWYG so confusing. These are the things that make explicit markup so straight forward. I don't think you can have WYSIWYG without the confusion or while maintaining the power of explicit markup.
If anything, Markdown or RST or Org provide a compelling middle ground: Markup is still explicit but minimal, and styling tries to come as close as possible to WYSIWYG without sacrificing control.
This, I think, is a far more compelling route to take than WYSIWYG or LaTeX-style explicit markup.
[+] [-] bowerbird|12 years ago|reply
congratulations, derbasti, on your observational oxyopia.
-bowerbird
[+] [-] minor_nitwit|12 years ago|reply
The controls for the text should be immediate in the text, that makes sense and is the most powerful implementation. But you have to see what it all means and be able to identify problems along the way when you make a mistake & know what your markdown is creating. Otherwise you type it out and notice that you forgot to force 15 line breaks.
[+] [-] dspillett|12 years ago|reply
> Could people please start working on the features that are needed?
sounds far too like the completely detail-less requirements we get through from our clients like "please provide robust MI".
[+] [-] melling|12 years ago|reply
Anyway, since we'll all be long dead before his plan starts to work, I think the better solution is to support inexpensive software. For example, I pay for Sublime Text. Recently I bought PixelMator and Sketch, and I'm planning on learning how to use them soon. :-)
Sure it would be great if Free Software ruled but faster change comes with a paid ecosystem. The real problem was that software was expensive. If it's simply inexpensive, we'll get most of what we need.
[+] [-] 30thElement|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] streptomycin|12 years ago|reply
Also, I don't know how much of the success/failure of FOSS can be pinned on RMS. He's just one man. The plan was never for the entire movement to be dependent on him.
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeroxmalf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
RMS whines : "25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing. That is why we added text properties and variable width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this.
Could people please start working on the features that are needed?"
And he's 100% accurate, it has been 25 years, and there is an open source WYSIWYG word processor, called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. He wants someone to do the work to make his tool of choice into something which can do what he wants to do in it.
A lot of people go this way, and we see several tools that all do variations on the same thing in their own peculiar way (Vive du choix!) but that means it is really really hard to figure out how to get somethings done when each set of tools rely on their own set of other tools.
The nice thing about Cathedrals is that you know what is expected of you :-)
[+] [-] adamnemecek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Toenex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
Emacs do exactly one thing well (editing text), and a bunch of other things sort of OK. The sort of OK stuff is there because their core, they are about editing text. Like with an IDE, if the editing is crap, the ide is crap. As such, all IDE's require a good text editor to start with before they can do anything well.
[+] [-] invalidOrTaken|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] groups|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] informatimago|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
As someone aware of gnu, but not an active participant, how effective are requests like this? Does "Can people start working on this?" actually get results? I'm curious as this gets to the heart of why they may have trouble finishing things. (You can't toss money at someone to do the dirty work)
I'm coming with an open mind, and would like to hear either side of this.
[+] [-] motters|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daleharvey|12 years ago|reply
However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in.
It would be kinda nice to see people work on those type of things.
[+] [-] pkaler|12 years ago|reply
The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc. It sounds like RMS means his desktop/laptop computer. On the upside, you have a user archetype: Richard Stallman. A good product manager would start building up a list of user stories:
[+] [-] joosters|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sanddancer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zvrba|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Myrmornis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmount|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catmanjan|12 years ago|reply
This kills two birds with one stone, gets me off MS Office and into keybind heaven
[+] [-] leephillips|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|12 years ago|reply
It's easy to use, too. Select the text, ALT-o b = bold, and so forth.
Still, a true WYSIWYG editing mode would be cool once in a while. Although, it's not that much trouble to select text and paste into a nearby LibreOffice window for true formatting.
[+] [-] gavinlynch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] informatimago|12 years ago|reply