Joe Francis wrote in ghost article :
> CSS is just a nightmare for wysiwyg editing, as far as I can see.
Hey Joe, thanks for the support ;-)))) You know that I agree 100%.
> So there are two ways to go:
>
> 1) Make a css editor that is the sticky gooey dream of most of the
> leadership here, which is not wysiwyg, but is structure oriented.
> I agree that it would be a pleasure to maintain a web site with such
> a tool if well executed.
>
> 2) Make a css editor that is strictly limited in what it can do,
> limited in the kinds of style rules it can work with, and is targeted
> at wysiwyg editing for people who want rich text and don't care or
> understand about the format, as long as it interoperates with their
> buddies, who (for some reason that escapes me) are using a css+html
> format. These folks are using it in mail, or chat, or something that
> needs a styled editor, but probalby NOT web page composing, at least
> not primarily.
Just to let Joe be sure that I agree with him : the latter is
considerably harder than the former.
I come from the SGML world and I'd love to see appear on the scene a
good xml+css editor with a very good UI and an excellent implementation
of the standards for people already having a good knowledge of these
standards. But it is a different product, with a very different
implementation.
> Clearly these two are very different pieces of technology with very
> different targets.
Absolutely.
> I keep being told that the world implied by number 2) above is coming,
> so we better be able to support it. But I don't understand *why* it's
> coming. And I'm not sure I believe that it *is* coming.
It is coming for sure. It is coming because more than 50% of american
citizens have internet access but only some hundreds of people are able
to answer to that simple question : what is the shortest valid html4
document ?
> > Yes, but people who only care about the rendering and not about the
> > structure won't be using Mozilla Composer.
>
> Why is that? Composer is free, it's part of a product that is very
> visible, it's on their platform, and it is targeted (at the moment at
> least) right at those folks who care about the rendering more than the
> structure (other than that the structure be compliant).
Exactly.
> > They'll be using the Microsoft Word instead
>
> Word is not free, it's sometimes not on their platform, and there are
> a lot of folks who just don't want to use it even if it was the
> perfect tool. I'm one of them. And it's not because I'm some
> microsoft hating fogey (even though I do work at Netscape!), but
> because the product is too expensive for the user I would get from it,
> and is usually not backwards compatible with older versions.
Can I add that the HTML produced by MS Word can be called whatever you
want, but definitely not HTML ? It reminds an Ada compiler : 3megs for
"Hello world".
</Daniel>
