🚀 go-pugleaf

In <GRODAN.92Apr7122044@cyklop.nada.kth.se> grodan@cyklop.nada.kth.se (Mats G L|fdahl) writes:

>Could this environment be enhanced in the wysiwyg direction, with
>resonabel speed, without actually causing a need to edit dvi files?
[...]
>Add the possibilities to edit the *text* in the previewer window.
>Adding text would change the TeX file buffer which would be common to
>both windows. The text you enter would show on the screen depending on
>the current font/size etc where you put the cursor, just like in your
>favourite wysiwyg program. 

I still think this is a misguided desire. The kind of editing you can
reasonably *expect* to be able to do in terms of the printed page---
correcting spelling mistakes, adding an extra word, etc---are just as
easily done in terms of the TeX source code. The kind of editing you'd
*like* to be able to do in terms of the printed page---changing the skip
between list items, fiddling with tolerances and penalties and so
forth---are exactly the things that are well nigh impossible to translate
back to changes in the source (when you adjusted that skip at the top of
the list, did you mean topsep or partopsep? and was that penalty an
interline penalty, or a widow penalty, or a hyphen demerit, or what?)

Way back when I was doing my BSc, my final year project was to produce just
such a previewer/editor (I was dead chuffed with the name `PrEditor'!). (It
was written in a homegrown programming language, on a homegrown machine, on
top of a homegrown text formatter, so don't get excited about it.) I
connected the previewer to a (homegrown!) text editor, and implemented
simple changes like editing the text and shifting columns of tables around;
I added a quick-and-dirty update (simply shifting bits of the page image
around) as well as a complete page reformat. I didn't realise the inherent
limitations when I started, and I don't really think I did when I finished
either, but looking back it all seems a great waste of time.

Ah me. What nostalgia. :-)

Jeremy