Re: BOB: GNOME Word Processor Efforts

[Sam Vilain <sam hydro gen nz>]

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998, Reklaw wrote:

> > I think a word processor is merely an editor with a few slight adjustments
> > to it's behaviour to make it more easy to handle language.  Emacs gives us
> > this already with it's buffers and modes - why re-invent the wheel to
> > provide a word processor that will be years behind in basic editing
> > features?
> There is more to a word processor than editing text. Emacs is 'years
> behind' in displaying and editing WYSIWYG documents (e.g. multi-font
> _formatted_ text with images). Emacs is trying to catch-up from what I
> understand. AFAIK emacs still has trouble display non-fixed-width fonts
> because it is too rooted in character display land.

You still haven't really explained to me the fundamental difference
between displaying a buffer that contains monospace text, and a buffer
that contains arbitrary media.

I haven't looked at the emacs source, so I can't really comment on how
re-usable it is - but surely all it needs is extensions to support
graphical buffers?  Then you also don't tie yourself to dependencies on
a GUI for a word processor.

---
Sam Vilain, sam@whoever.com