|
<<Up Contents
WYSIAYG
WYSIAYG describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You Get"; an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG.
Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves[?], but also to lack depth;
they often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a command-style interface.
When this happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem.
This term is most often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs.
WYSIWYG `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and presentation slides.
When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like TeX, the UNIX system's troff, or CSS becomes not just desirable but a necessity.
Compare YAFIYGI[?], command line interface
Based on an article from Jargon File.
| Elsewhere |  | |
Search engine
Web directory
|
CONTENTS:
|
