Re: BOB: GNOME Word Processor Efforts

[Sam Vilain <sam hydro gen nz>]

On Sat, 17 Oct 1998, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > You still haven't really explained to me the fundamental difference
> > between displaying a buffer that contains monospace text, and a buffer
> > that contains arbitrary media.
> Emacs is already being extended to allow fonts and images. XEmacs already
> has those things. However, it is totally irrelevant, because Gnome wants
> to write a WYSIWYG word processor in the
> Word/WordPerfect/StarOffice/Applix/etc. tradition.  Emacs is not that and
> never will be. So it is pointless to discuss. A text editor is not aimed
> at the same audience, and is not optimized for the same kinds of work.

When I saw a seminar being given by Richard Stallman last month, he said a
statement similar to this (heavily paraphrased): 

      "It would be a shame if people had to choose between either a
   powerful editor, or a WYSIWYG word processor, when GNU emacs could be
   extended to be both."

I shouldn't continue this discussion on, as I haven't even actually got
gnome fully cranked up yet and am hence really out of my depth.  I may put
in a few more thoughts later after I've got my head around the whole
project. 

---
Sam Vilain, sam@whoever.com