Re: Re. WYSIWYG vs. tags

[Romay Jean Sitze <rositze -at- NMSU -dot- EDU>]

On Wed, 30 Aug 1995, Geoff Hart wrote:

>      Here's another note on the WHYSIWYG vs. tag-based
>      editors thread. One thing I absolutely love about
>      WordPerfect is the "reveal codes" (tags) window.
>      I've long since stopped counting the number of
>      times I used it to discover and delete a strange
>      formatting code that I could never see or debug in
>      any other software. Marvelous feature, and
>      thoroughly indispensible. WYSIWYG can be more
>      efficient in creating the tags, but there are
>      times when you simply can't understand and solve a
>      problem without viewing the tags.

Normally I prefer W4W to WP, but in this instance, I agree with Geoff.
This can provide some real help when a file seems to be going haywire.
It's amazing to me, though, that not all tech writers make effective use
of this feature in WP.  At my last tech writing job, I took over an
updating project started by my predecessor. I was told "it doesn't seem
to be printing right."  Well, to make a long story short, the manual had
been through at least 4 previous updates.  And still had all the codes
from each in the file.  Each person who worked on it just added new ones
on top of the old.  Once I cleaned up the tags and set it up correctly,
it printed just fine.

        RoMay Sitze,  rositze -at- nmsu -dot- edu