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Re: Why WYSIWYG for XML???

Subject: Re: Why WYSIWYG for XML???
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 09:24:18 -0400




Bill Lawrence wrote:

Chris,

Forgive me for not understanding the complexity of legislation.

Two questions:

1) Before these folks had WYSIWYG systems, how was it done?

CCCCCC RRRRRRR AA FFFFFFFFF TTTTTTTTTTTT
CC CC RR RR AAAA FF TT
CC RR RR AA AA FF TT
CC RR RR AA AA FF TT
CC RRRRR AAAAAAAAAA FFFFFFF TT
CC RR RR AA AA FF TT
CC RR RR AA AA FF TT
CC CC RR RR AA AA FF TT
CCCCCC RR RR AA AA FF TT


Bill,

Back when income distribution was more even among occupations and only a small fraction of the population attended college, a lot of the brightest people set type. Many of them were perfectly capable of learning to set legislation and other legal matter, and numerous composition houses grew up specializing in such work. I sat next to a couple of guys at one conference banquet who worked for a company that principally did legislative typesetting for the New York State Legislature. They took each day's committee markups--from all committees in both houses--which meant converting stenographer's notes to strikethrough of deleted words, italicization of inserted words, change bars, etc., all within the context of the conventions Chris is talking about; and then they delivered printed, bound copies to every legislator's desk by 9:00 the following morning. At that time they were toward the end of their transition to the Penta system, which allowed them to use a form of semantic markup; but the company had been in business at least since the days of manually keyboarded Linotype.

So the short answer, as I indicated above, is craft--both a set of skills and a set of attitudes embodied in trained, dedicated employees. Computers? Feh!


2) How did they learn to deal with computers in general and a WYSIWYG
system in particular?

They didn't. They brought in interns, later hired them, eventually learned, in some cases, to read their own email. Mostly they don't have time to turn on a monitor or touch a keyboard, though, to this day.



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References:
RE: Why WYSIWYG for XML???: From: Bill Lawrence

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