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WYSIAYG

 

WYSIAYG

WYSIAYG describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You Get": an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG.
Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth;
they often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a command-style interface.
When this happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem.

This term is most often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs.
WYSIWYG `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and presentation slides.
When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like TeX, the UNIX system's troff, or CSS becomes not just desirable but a necessity.

Based on an article from Jargon File.


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