WYSIWYG editors and extraneous code

[Dan Lester]

At 08:57 AM 10/13/97 -0700, Sheryl Dwinell wrote:
>Does anyone have a particular WYSIWYG editor that they think does a good
>job of NOT inserting lots of extraneous code? 

I understand the problem, as I've used every editor described in the
message being replied to.  As I wrote my first HTML in vi, I fully
appreciate the changes we've come through.  I also hate all the junk that
the editors put in.

However, my other side says: "If it works, and someone else makes the
pages, then t'ain't my problem."   Having done all the pages on
http://library.idbsu.edu/ and http://www.idbsu.edu/ for several years, I'm
just so happy that someone else is now doing pages, both to reduce my load
and to add new content, that I refuse to complain about the bloated code.

I guess I think back to the fun of dot commands in Script or original
WordStar.  They are a perfect analogy for HTML tags, as we used to have to
put .in5 in the left margin every time we wanted a line indented five
spaces, and .pa for each paragraph, etc, etc.  For all I know now, the
codes hidden in Word97 are equally bloated, but do I care?  Nope.  It does
the job.  Period.

I realize that I'm not a cataloger or a programmer (though I've done both),
and lack the drive for absolute perfection that both of those professions
stereotypically aspire to, but why can't we just accept that "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it".   After all, no matter how perfect we make it, the
viewer on the other end will probably just mung it up with his browser
options anyway.  

cheers

dan

Dan Lester
dan at 84.com
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.  Erasmus, 1534