Re: Emacs as word processor

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 19.11.2013 07:01, schrieb Richard Stallman:
>          [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
>          [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
>          [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.
>
>      There are a lot of reactions on this thread that seem somewhat hesitant
>      about emacs adding WYSIWIG support, but I suspect it's fear that #2 will
>      corrupt the lisp machine interfaces that we already know and
>      enjoy...


Don't think so. WYSIWIG might be useful for Emacs beginners and also in some 
circumstances,
for example when you can't customize your common environment somewhere, don't 
have the time etc.

However, several aspects are in the way.

First of all the display engine.
WYSIWIG means to write things back from display. The latter must provide a 
fairly realistic view of layout.
It's far from this.

OTOH the exporting- and recording-tools --ODF, HTML, PDF etc.-- seem to exist 
in that or other form already.

But there is another obstacle: AFAIS the Emacs development is done  to a 
certain extend by people sharing code and tools they use themselves.
Can't see a person, who is capable of writing this and also would need and use 
WYSIWIG.