Re: tlug: Linux Users Old and New (was: High-end vs Low-end Linux)

[Jonathan Byrne - 3Web <jq@example.com>]

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, John De Hoog wrote:

>No shortage of opinions in this group, is there? Just out of curiosity,
>which WYSIWYG HTML editors have you tried, on what platforms? How did
>they suck?

How do they suck?  Let me count the ways :-)  They suck because they produce
really crummy HTML.  I can't recall ever having run across one that produced a
clean page, although I suppose you might get one if the file was small enough
and simple enough.  Among them all, the worst stuff I've seen is what you get
when something like MS Word pukes out an HTML version of a document.  People
say MS Word files are bloated, but you haven't seen anything until you've seen
a Word-generated HTML file.

I could also go off on a rant about how they also suck because they not only
do nothing to encourage their users to learn to do HTML right (that is, by
hand), but many users of WYSIWYG editors are unaware that there is even such a
thing as a right way or a wrong way to do it.  I run across that all the time
in my job.

Which ones have I tried?  I looked at Netscape (de)Composer once and
took an instant dislike to it.  My general policy on WYSIWYG HTML
editors is that I refuse to use them.   In most cases, they produce horrible
HTML, and even the best ones probably never produce anything W3C-compliant (I
haven't yet found an instance of one that did, anyway).  The only way to get
good HTML is to make it yourself, then run an HTML parser over it to make sure
you didn't mess anything up.  WYSIWYG editors not only tend to produce
non-compliant code, they don't usually do things in the most efficient manner,
either.  Maybe someday there will be a drag-and-drop editor that can produce
HTML as good as what a skilled human can produce, but that day isn't now.

I write all of my HTML in a text editor, usually Xemacs.  The only HTML editor
I ever used on Windows was Hot Dog, which is good but kept getting so bloated
that I would have had to upgrade my computer to keep using it.  Instead I just
switched to a text editor and can't imagine going back to any variety of HTML
editor now.  Xemacs gives me nice syntax highlighting, and that's all I ask
for.

Cheers,

Jonathan Byrne
Media and Content Section
3Web - Your Internet Solution! <URL:http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/index.en.html>
3Web Channel <URL: http://www.3web.co.jp/index.en.html>

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