Re: WYSIWYG Editor in Self ?

[Randall.Smith@Eng.Sun.COM (Randy Smith)]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> is there anybody who wrote a WYSIWYG Editor in Self?

There is no printing support in the system so the "What You Get" part of
WYIWYG is currently "Nothing"!

As to something to support some of your ideas below, you could start
with an editorMorph, which will allow arbitrary objects in line with
text in mixed fonts and colors.

It is in places a somewhat complicated beast, because it tries to
optimize itself to provide better performance.  It was never really
fast enough by the time we did our public release, so it is only used
in a few places in the system.

Good luck!

	--Randy

> 
> My dream editor would be one with a LaTeX-like internal representation of the document
> and a WYSIWYG interface with a very intuitive interaction.
> The LaTeX representation should enable the easy usage of user defined constructs.
> To handle this in a WYSIWYG system it would be necessary to provide views behind the curtains.
> 
> The interaction should be very object oriented, i.e. 
> 	first select an object (or a group of objects)
> 	then  get the menu of possible messages from that object(s) 
> 	then  select a message
> 	then  provide arguments to the upcoming form
> 	then  confirm/cancel the operation
> 
> For undo-able argumentless messages the last 2 steps are superfluous.
> For very often used methods there should be short key sequences to call the method.
> 
> The most today WYSIWYG systems are function oriented so it wouldn't be good to mimic
> their interfaces.
> 
> The best thing of an editor in Self would be the possibility to extend/change the editor 
> to the needs of the user. This should be supported by a good help facility.
> 
> Emacs is a prototype for an extensible (but ASCII) editor. It has a help system with 
> some good ideas. But there remain unfulfilled wishes.
> 
> My requirements are very strong, so I would welcome for the first time a simple WYSIWYG 
> editor which supports different formats (headings, main text, item ...).
> Later there could be extras like equations, tables, references, ... .
>  
> I hope my ideas don't sound too silly. 
> 
> 
> Michael
>