Re: Text processor

[Stephen Rust <steve tp org>]

Personally, I think that any word processor or document editor that saves
things in a proprietary format (i.e: not using open standards), or at
least doesn't allow the exporting of the data to an open standard format
is something that won't be too usable in the future.  At least won't be
usable to me.  I want to write my book, or my document easily not worrying
about the formatting too much, just clicking on a few simple choices for a
particular document block (whether its a title, a paragraph, etc.), and
then I want to export it to any number of formats so its readable and
usable by people trying to access the data from anywhere.  Whether that be
printed in postscript, posted to the web as html/xml or converted to pdf
for all those pdf people.

> No DTD, no DSSSL, no XSL. Something much simpler. A "proprietary" format;
> perhaps saved as a standalone XML document, but that's an implementation
> detail. Trying to implement those complicated specs is what always stalls
> these projects; even the command-line SGML tools are fairly lame compared
> to proprietary offerings. Granted, XML and XSL are supposed to be simpler.
>  
> I don't want to see any tags. The structure should be there, but it should
> be implicit; it should be visually represented via bold, font size, and
> layout. Should also be possible to move structural blocks as a unit via
> drag-and-drop.
> 

If you again take Lyx as an example, your document format is saved as
latex, but you can also export to a number of other formats.  And the
structure is implicit as you suggest.  An enhancement would be to have a
tab where you could bring up the actualy "structural" formatting tags,
where you could see them if you wanted to, but they wouldn't interfere
with the main document if you didn't want to.

> For the book I just wrote, I invented a standalone XML format and wrote
> the book with those tags. I just made up the tags I happened to need. 
> Then I wrote a program to slurp the XML and spit HTML. I would like to be
> able to do something similar, but without the hassle. :-)
> 
> I think the key to getting something useful would be to remain very
> focused, have a clear vision, and keep it simple enough to finish in a few
> months. If "DSSSL" enters your mind, you will never be done.
> 
> If I seem to have lots of opinions it's because I spent the whole
> book-writing period fuming about how I'm going to write this before I ever
> write any large document ever again. :-) So I have thought about it some.

Yep.  The reason I got interested also.  I wanted to have something very
easy to use, and just be able to "do it" without having to worry about the
formatting like you had to do with your standalone XML format and things.
Adding DocBook support to an editor similar to Lyx is something I have on
my todo list for the new editor I've been working on.  So, previously
where you've said XML or SGML are far too generic for an editor like this,
perhaps doing the editor not for the generic languages, but for a specific
DTD like DocBook (or LinuxDoc like Lyx support right now) will make it
possible for people to add on the functionality for their own DTD in the
future, rather than trying to support the entire standard to begin with.

Just some thoughts.

Steve