On Thu, Jul 02, 1998 at 09:16:21AM -0400, Michael Stutz wrote:
>
> Excellent stuff! You mentioned a good argument _for_ a WYSIWYG environment
> -- that you preferred TeX but that a WYSIWYG approach makes more sense to
> assess the timing and flow of the script; have you ever tried LyX?
Yes, I have, and I think it's a very nice tool for writing documents
in the 'default' LaTeX styles (i.e. articles, reports etc).
Unfortunately, there is no obvious way of producing arbitrary layouts
from within LyX, without reverting to LaTeX. And for entering LaTeX
source, I'll take Emacs over LyX any day.
Of course, what I would _really_ like to see is a tool for _writers_.
Not for office workers (MS Office, Applixware). Not for programmers
(Emacs).
I would love to see something without the overhead of full WYSIWYG
typesetting, but with basic manuscript layout capabilities, some sort
of style mechanism, on-the-fly spellchecking, outlining, highlighting,
hidden comments, regexp searches etc. Something that supports the
writer the way Emacs supports the programmer.
MS Word is clearly not a tool for a writer; I don't want to insert
spreadsheets in my screenplays, and why should I need a graphical
display to write a text manuscript? Emacs is nicer in many ways, but
it lacks some crucial features, and the fact that it is limited to
ASCII makes it hard to implement them.
--
Joakim Pietras <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
PGP Public Key available on request
