h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Let's also not forget WYSIWYM, "what you see is what you *mean*". In theory, it's the ultimate goal of all word processors. The user shouldn't have to worry about tab stops, putting two spaces after a comma, etc. etc. They should just be able to write a document and have it come out typeset correctly. Unfortunately, the ability to do this perfectly is far enough in the future that by then we won't need word processors, because we'll be able to just send our brain waves to anyone who wants to hear what we have to say, er, think.


The closest anything comes to WYSIWYM here at the end of the millenium is lyx, at http://www.lyx.org (specifically see their "about" pages for a description of WYSIWYM.)

There is also WYSIAWYG which is of course What You See Is Almost What You Get. According to the Hackers Dictionary http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html The entry on WYSIWYG claims emacs as the first WYSIWYG text editor.

I hate to say it, but this is more: "WYSIWITYM" What You See Is What I Think You Mean. (wizzy-wittem)...

After all - anyone who's ever tried to write a technical document with any of the big marketshare word processors knows how frustrating the program's assumptions are...

"Hmm, they typed mHz, that must be wrong, I'll fix it to Mhz."

"Gee, these twenty pages of Perl code have a lot of spelling mistakes."

Why ever use a word processor for this sort of job?

Surely if you want to write Pearl and they don't have anything other than Word you use the notepad which is more or less standard on Windows PCs? (or Vi or something simmilar) No assumptions, it just lets you get on with it.

Using word processing software for code or anything other than a plain language letter format is asking for trouble from the off set.

*shrugs* Maybe someone is holding a gun to your head making you use the wrong program for the job.

Could it also be WYGIWITYYW? (What You Get Is What I Tell You You Want) But that'd be evil to pronounce, Wiggi-Witew, or something like that...

WYGIWITYYW would probably be pronounced Wiggi-witiyew. Nope, nothing useful to say.