No, it explains why perhaps you shouldn't. Under certain
circumstances. It's got nothing to do with the tools immediately at
hand, on either frontier, it's just a good write-up of why you don't
really want WYSIWYG for some things (even when you think you do). But
what I really tried to say is I think you should read it just to get a
bit of perspective, not because it will make you change your mind
(which it might, but probably won't).
> If there are Mac users maintaining their FAQs as HTML successfully with
> tools that run on the Mac, I'd be interested in hearing about it. I
Me too.
I'm no fanatic. I believe it's perfectly feasible to have +near+
WYSIWYG for a lot of things, but in my experience, some things just
don't lend themselves to that very well.
My own tools are not so great I'd want to brag about them, and I
admit they're running on Unix and probably daunting to somebody who is
used to WIMP interfaces (whatever happened to that great acronym, is
nobody using it anymore? :-) ... But in the present discussion, I
think it might be important for readers of this list (1) that they
have a choice, (2) why I chose the tools I did (and ditto ditto for
you and yours), and (3) that it's IMHO predictable that you will run
into a certain type of problems if you only care about ease of use.
Too much ranting about (3) will certainly take us drifting off this
list, but I do think this is a relevant discussion. Even realizing
that you have a choice (and, to paraphrase Lloyd, to realize that
there's more to word processing than merely punching the keys in the
right order so as not to misspell the words) could be a revelation to
some.
For the record, then, what I think you can gain by giving up a bit of
ease of use (which really it isn't, but yes, let's forget about that):
* Portability of text-only source. You can edit it on the same host
where the home page lives, or take it with you in the Mac laptop
(see? ;^) over the weekend.
* Conditional inclusion -- the ability to have one "source" version
which knows that "this part should be visible only in the HTML
version, and this other part should have the URL:s replaced with
live links and yet this other part shouldn't be included on
Thursdays ..."
* Multiple targets -- you can have HTML, PostScript, text-only,
roff, your own custom SGML DTD, and a help database all generated
from the same source.
* Version control -- last month's FAQ was better? Just do an
"RCS revert".
By the way, you can see how some part of Microsoft is apparently
struggling to bring some of the above features into the Word/Excel
framework, but they're reinventing the wheel (and IMHO seem to be
stuck with a prototype which is more like square).
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you don't have a choice. For me,
these things are more important than that ole learning curve involved,
but then I have the steep part of it mostly behind me. (Pompous
background music here.)
And now, the bad news: It's not perfect. By a long shot. The system
I use is really, REALLY homemade, but the things I think I really have
to have under my control are there. The rest is just up to me having
the time to make it decent ... Partly testament to the grumpy attitude
that I want it +exactly+ the way I want it, and partly that there are
no really good tools on the {platform name here} side, either. :-/
/* era */
-- See <http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/> for mantra, disclaimer, etc. * If you enjoy getting spam, I'd appreciate it if you'd register yourself at the following URL: <http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/spam.html>
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