🚀 go-pugleaf

This concerns batch vs wysiwyg formatters.
One of the so-called advantages of a batch system such as the UNIX troff
is that it is easy to build pre- and post-processors which deal with special
purpose text needs, e.g., bibliographical citations, equations, tables,
pictures, graphs, indexing, tri-directional printing, etc. If the language
of the basic formatter is powerful enough, each of these can be done as an
independent program which can be used in a pipe with the basic formatter.
Each such independent program can deal with its own special input and the
writer of it can focus on designing it right with a good user interface and
all the parenthoods. Moreover, it is very easy to add new capabilities as
new independent programs, to wit as has been done with grap, indx, and
tri-roff recently. In wysiwyg systems, it would seem that the formatter
would tend to be more
monolithic in that all such other processing would have to be done within the
single program. Adding a new capability would seem to require opening up the
base formatter and adding the capabilities to it. This could very well be
rather messy to do.
 
Please correct me if I am wrong about wysiwyg systems.

My question is: Is there a wysiwyg formatting system that has been designed
specifically to be extensible in this manner. Has there been any work on
structuring wysiwyg formatters to be extensible in this manner?

Please reply directly to me. I will summarize replies to the net.

Prof. Daniel M. Berry, Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa 32000 ISRAEL
Tel:+972-4-294325, Bitnet:DBERRY@TECHSEL
Csnet & Internet:dberry@sel.technion.ac.il
DASnet:[DDB1DM]dberry, MCIMail:277-9346 <dberry>
Prof. Daniel M. Berry, Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa 32000 ISRAEL
Tel:+972-4-294325
Bitnet:DBERRY@TECHSEL, Csnet & Internet:dberry@sel.technion.ac.il
DASnet:[DDB1DM]dberry, MCIMail:277-9346 <dberry>