wysiwyg and light-markup are oil and water

[Michael]

bowerbird via Markdown-Discuss schrieb am 12.09.2014 06:16:
> there is a lot of surface appeal to a system
> which combines wysiwyg and light-markup.
> 
> and one can do a few simple combinations.
> 
> but before long, and certainly once you try
> to tackle some more-complicated features,
> you find yourself torn by an inherent conflict.
> 
> starkly put, there is a _difference_ between
> what you put in, and what you get out, and
> the question is which one you want to "see".
> 
> by definition, wysiwyg pictures the "output".

Yes. And imagining the output from the input is
hard for many people, have both next to each other
seems the current way to go, but be honest that 
is a crutch and not end user ready.

> 
> but an inability to "see" your input means it
> can become very difficult to edit that input.

What if the output determines the input?

> 
> the inclination, upon that realization, is to
> attempt to show "enough" of the input that
> it becomes possible to do your editing, but
> that just turns the wysiwyg into cruel illusion.

That's why I'm not satisfied with the current solutions.

> 
> i'm not gonna say that it's "impossible", but
> i will advise anyone who is tempted to try it
> to carefully map everything you need to do
> before you even start to think about coding.

Yes, that is true. One has to formalize and "parse" the
user input and that is hard. 

> 
> if you want to take on the hardest thing first,
> figure out how to successfully allow a paste
> from an arbitrary ms-word file... good luck...

I don't have ms-word here, Marko Editor has functionality for 
LibreOffice and pasting from websites. I admit it is not perfect, 
but, I think, not too bad either. One has to have in mind, that 
not all formatting and content can be resembled in Markdown and 
Marko Editor only takes from a paste what it can handle, so again
what you see after a paste in the editor is what you get (modulo bugs). 

> 
> -bowerbird
> 
> p.s. even if you solve that fundamental gap,
> you will also discover that "wysiwyg" carries
> excess baggage, in that some people think
> it entails one thing, and other people another,
> so you're never gonna make everyone happy.

That is true, but this problem also arises when you try to
convince people to use any new technilogy. Why are there
no columns in Markdown, and so on...

Regards, 
Michael

> 
> p.p.s. all this also applies to contenteditable,
> in case anybody is mulling that as a solution.
> 
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