RE: Emacs as word processor / Text Properties

[Drew Adams]

> All that said, *every* known WYSWYG word-processor also degrades
> to using a dump of its internal data structures as its file
> format.

Not sure just what you mean by that.  But if the internal data
structures faithfully represent XML data, and the output file
format is a serialization of that XML data, then this is hardly
messy or lossy.

And that is the case for more and more "WYSIWYG" editors, at
least the "high-end" ones.  The internal data structures are XML,
and the file format is XML.  From the internal XML, or from the
output XML file, is generated XHTML, PDF, or whatever.

Internally, an XML representation might use a DOM or binary XML
or any number of other implementation means.  But the only
important question is whether the output (serialized) form and
the internal form mirror each other properly.

(For that, there can be considerations of whether document
fidelity is needed or just DOM fidelity (i.e., whether or not
insignificant whitespace needs to be preserved).

Sometimes an editor ("word processor") has additional output
file formats, even if it is capable of saving as XML.  But
that's another story.  More and more, the "real" output file
format is XML.  (Yes, for MS Word, most people still see
*.doc files, not XML files.)