Which one is better and ideal in a web based application?
Edit:
Actually I am developing a community site. So the level of users may vary. Heard about XSS security issues with WYSIWYG editors. Also I am not familiar with WYSIWYM editors and its features. As far as I know the features in WYSIWYM editor is less compared to the other one. I figured one named as "WMD: The Wysiwym Markdown Editor". Its quite easy to use.
So security and ease of usability should be there. In such a situation which editor will be better.
If your users can handle WYSIWYM, I'd go with that.
I'm considering your system will be visual, that is, if you say something is a title it'll look like a title (otherwise the WYS part wouldn't apply). If the user has to manually type markup, then only the most savvy or technical users will be able to handle it.
What I've seen with most users is that they have trouble giving meaning to what they want in a document. They don't think "this is a title", they think "this should be bigger and bold". People that cannot think "this is a title" can't handle a WYSIWYM or they'll find it hard.
Who is going to be your user base? If it's people writing academic papers I'd go with WYSIWYM because they'll have no trouble handling it. If it's for house wives writing recipes, they may not be able to handle it or they'll find it so hard that they'll decide it's not worth the effort.
For me the ideal is WYSIWYM, but do it only if you think your target users will be able to handle it, otherwise you'll have to go with WYSIWYG.
I personally love the WYSIWYM mechanism. I use it for my own work as much as possible. I like it so much that I try to get others to try it too.
Boy, that goes over like a fart in a space-suit.
My cynical self assumes this to mean that most folks are ruined by tools like Word. Everyone knows to make a meaningful document. They also know what a meaningful document looks like. If it doesn't look like that, the tool is wrong! What's actually happening is these document producers don't actually know what they mean, and are used to hiding that fact with pretty borders and adjusting tab-stops.
What I really think is happening, though, is that these folks who are resistant to WYSIWYM are that way because it's a harder way of thinking about something they already invested in learning. This is a level of abstraction above WYSIWYG, though not quite as far removed as composing documents in markup like LaTeX or HTML. And since they can already create any sort of document in a tool that requires no abstraction, it's just a hard sell.
That being said, I think you should force WYSIWYM on your users if that is feasable. There are some good reasons for this
All of the benefits that naturally come with two stage composition. Formatting is not decidable until the document is composed, so any time spent before the document is finished on formatting is time wasted. Get it composed quickly.
The document is marked up with semantic information. This can be used in searches, or for other tasks that strictly visual markup cannot. This is especially useful for accessibility.
By depriving your users of arbitrary formatting decisions, all of your documents will follow company branding. Everything will be in a standard font and color. All text will use the same spacing and height. It will look to readers like it came from a single entity.
Check this
http://www.wymeditor.org/
Could you be a bit more specific? What kind of web application? How many users? Who will the users be?
In general though I've had quite of bit of experience implementing WYSIWYG editors for various CMSs and found them to be quite problematic because clients often like to go wild with formatting their content repeatedly over and over again and often end up having the editor generate HTML of poor quality. This causes all sorts of layout issues or simply pages that look really messy because everyone likes to fancy themselves as graphic designers.
If done properly WYSIWYG can work very well, but it is more work to really get it right, especially when taking into consideration CSS. Most of the good editors are nicely configurable and allow to specify just how much control to give the client over visual formatting.
As for the quality of the code they generate, tools such as FCKEditor and TinyMCE are very mature and do a good job of editing out the irrelevant crud in the source code, but be prepared to provide support for clients using a WYSIWYG when their content doesn't look the way they would like it to.
Since WYSIWYM editors are much like WYSIWYG with structural formatting instead of visual formatting, philosophically I think they are better and less problem prone. So if the client doesn't have a need to visually format the content I think WYSIWYM is bound to cause less headaches down the road.
The editor used here in Stack Overflow is a good example of restrained WYSIWYG. You can format the content visually but only to a certain extent.
If your users a tech savy and understand how the basics of markup go and you think they will feel more empowered using WYSIWYM, then use that. If your application is going to be used to people who have little technical knowledge, use WYSIWYG.
Unless you are doing a tool for print layout (i.e. Indesign or maybe a mailing list printing tool) you are probably better to stick with WYSIWYM.
It is likely to be easier to implement
Web browsers are highly configurable and you may not have fine grained control over items like font size.
The structure is explicit so rendering to different media is comparatively easy.
It avoids the temptation on the part of users to over-design the document or whatever they are entering.
Document structure facilitates indexing, table-of-contents generation and cross-referencing where this is relevant. Compare (for example) maintianing a large index in Word with doing in LaTeX or Framemaker.
Anecdotal experience from LaTeX users (in particular) suggests that organising a document by structure is likely to produce a better document.
From my experience with MYSIWYM, I was very seduced by the idea and the looks, but I was then deceived to know that the editor didn't give me a simple and efficient way to restrict the user, for example the user can insert images inside paragraphs... and I don't want that... I want more control over what the user can do.
Related
I am very, very new to Rails development. I have read the arguments against using Rich Text editors that are WYSIWYG. For the purpose of making a CMS for my portfolio site, I can understand RedCloth and implement it.
My question is what happens when there is a lengthy post to be written, how does RedCloth make my job faster? Is there a scenario where Rich Text editors would be preferable?
Pardon me if this sounds ignorant. I want to understand what the best approach is to my situation.
Thank you,
Rishi
just initiated a little pro/cons list of both alternatives, feel free to contribute
WYSIWIG editors
pros:
really easy to set up (check ckeditor and this little gem for instance)
easy to use for anyone able to use Word... to some point
lets you insert any html code / script you want
cons:
the Redcloth site gives sound reasons why you shouldn't use WYSIWYG editors ; among them :
often generates bad, redundant, semanticaly incorrect html code
often lets your users mess up with your site's look and feel by defining their own styles, stuffed in html style attributes
may confuse your users, beacuse they don't know what happens "under the hood", in html ("why can't i just place this picture where i want, in the middle of this page ?")
Textile, Markdown, etc.
pros:
easy to learn, easy to use
usually a good incentive on users to produce semantically correct, structured documents
easy to sanitize, unless you need the html not to be escaped
does not mess with your sites style, unless you allow the user to use advanced features of the format
raw content is readable and well-structured
slightly less storage space needed for raw content
cons:
your users have to learn it, and some don't love it (but WYSIWYG-style UIs do exist to help them ; just look at the good job StackOverflow did with theirs)
for advanced features you have to know the format well
It is a personal choice, you should use whatever you feel is comfortable, especially when you have just started.
WYSIWYG editors are some times not advisable for more advanced users and for making special features, this is because they distance you from the actual source code and force you to work within their frame.
These editors are convenient and quick for simpler work exactly because they give a frame to work in.
Since its not like a code framework or library, you can always make a switch when you are at a point when the WYSIWYG editor you are using is beginning to limit you and get in your way. (only you will know this)
Before then go right ahead!
The long story:
The larger problem is that I'm trying to convince people from switching away from Outlook to a more sane bugtracker, preferably web-based that we could also use as a public bugtracker. But the current argument against it is that the Outlook editor (which is really Word with all the bells and whistles) allows easy inserting of pictures, advanced formatting, etc. So I wonder if I'm at a dead end, or there is hope yet.
The problem in a nutshell:
I want to know - is it possible to create a website component that would be a REALLY powerful rich text editor. A must-have feature is to insert pictures into the editor straight from the clipboard. Better yet - does something like that exist?
There is no limit on the allowed technology. It can be flash based, java based, work only in IE, etc.
Is it possible: Yes, but not with JavaScript alone. You will need a plugin or client software to accomplish this.
As far as the technology allowed, this really depends on how you want to implement it. You could use the JRE and write everything in Java. If you're more focused on IE you might consider VB or C#.
I've always been interested in writing and designing programming languages. Of course, it's pretty difficult to find an employer that will let you write a programming language as part of your job. So I'm looking for the "next best thing".
What fields of programming will let me get some experience solving some related problems? Or what kinds of employers are most likely to view all of my dinky little interpreters as relevant experience?
If your interest in language design is irrepressible, get a Ph.D. and make it your area of research. You can count on academia to support all manner of unprofitable activity.
None. The bulk of the professionals in that field do not design languages for a living, but retarget existing compilers to new (usually embedded) targets, or work on source2source conversion systems for legacy code, making a few language extensions in the process.
You should really ask yourself if you want this, because, besides from an extremely lucky shot, that is the realistic outlook of what you will do if you go into this industry.
Remember that the big public toolchain industry is not very profitable at the moment, and that maybe a good 100 languages are in largescale pulbic use and continually maintained, after 30 years of programming languages creation.
I know this is is very gloom, but I hope it sets you on the path to chuck the romantic, hobbyist view, and start researching how the real world in this field looks like.
Moreover, having done small hobby projects on your own is not really a pre. You need to show that you can work on large projects in a team, more than that you can create a small interpreter on your own. If you really want to pursue this, I'd recommend:
stay in school, and get a bachelor (preferably a master or PHD) in CS.
join some opensource team that works on a significant project in the field. gcc, but also the Java world, Tracemonkey (Mozilla), Mono etc. Verifiable experience in real world scenarios is very important.
I think the best way to get into this type of work would be to undertake an advanced degree with a specific focus on language design, compilers etc. It's going to be very tough for you to walk in off the street into a private company and start writing new language features otherwise.
You could also shoot a little higher and on your own, or with a small team, produce something that is much more than just a dinky little interpreter. Show your potential employer that you can produce something useful.
I have worked as an embedded programmer for the past ten years. Before that I wrote compilers (and assemblers, linkers, debuggers, etc.) for 20 years.
My co-workers joke that I turn every problem in to a parsing problem. And they're right. I've used techniques that are appropriate for language design many times during the course of my career.
Today, I play around with compiler stuff on the side: http://ellcc.org. It helps me scratch my language itch.
Actually, there is a fair bit of work going on with visual programming. It isn't exactly traditional programming language work as we know it but there is a need for it. For example, a lot of advanced data analysis tools rely on visual programming tools (Pentaho). You don't have to look too hard to find good practical uses of visual programming.
To get into visual programming languages, you will need to do an advanced degree with an advisor in the area. You will need to do some human computer interaction / interface work in addition to the programming language stuff.
An employer that has a rich "domain" (i.e. a complex industry) can benefit from a "domain specific language".
Will they realise this? Unlikely. They'll be too likely trapped in their deep domain (and entrenched legacy systems) to see that a targeted language could help unclog the mire.
But if you bury yourself in a complex industry for long enough to gain rich domain knowledge you may then be able to turn them with your own skunkwork DSL. Slim chance.
Stay in academia. If you want to develop a new language your chances of being paid to do so are vanishingly small. Newer languages tend to be expressions of a novel problem domain, and you only really encounter the chance to develop them where (a) novel problems are part of the scenery, and (b) no-one is troubled by the necessity to actually earn a living.
Please take your time over it, as well. Speaking as a jobbing developer, the last thing I need is another blasted language to learn :-)
In static analysis there is a lot to do, and the problems that come up are related to those that interest you.
Most currently popular languages came out of a geniune NEED to scratch a particular ITCH. Python came about because some non-C programmers NEEDed to customize inputs their C programs and libraries. Lua came out of the NEED to embed a scripting language in to C programs. Erlang was created to address the NEED of 99.9999999% uptime, hot code loading, and highly concurrent execution. Perl came out of the NEED to easily write programs that parsed text files.
So the very simple question any employer will be asking themselves, and you should ask yourself is. What NEED can I supply a solution to that doesn't exist. Hobby work very seldom shows that you are providing solutions to a NEED, most of the time it is showing that you like to re-invent the wheel for the sake of re-inventing the wheel.
Let's say that you have to implement some functionality that is not trivial (it will take at least 1 work week). You have a SDK/API/library that contains (numerous) code samples demonstrating the usage of the part of the SDK for implementing that functionality.
How do you approach learning all the samples, extract the necessary information, techniques, etc. in order to use them to implement the 'real thing'. The key questions are:
Do you use some tool for diagramming of the control flow, the interactions between the functions from the SDK, and the sample itself? Which kind of diagrams do you find useful? (I was thinking that the UML sequence diagram can be quite useful together with the debugger in this case).
How do you keep the relevant and often interrelated information about SDK/API function calls, the general structure and calls order in the sample programs that have to be used as a reference - mind maps, some plain text notes, added comments in the samples code, some refactoring of the sample code to suit your personal coding style in order to make the learning easier?
Personally I use the prototyping approach. Keep development to manageable iterations. In the beginning, those iterations are really small. As part of this, don't be afraid to throw code away and start again (everytime I say that somewhere a project manager has a heart attack).
If your particular task can't easily or reasonably be divided into really small starting tasks then start with some substitute until you get going.
You want to keep it as simple as you can (the proverbial "Hello world") just to familiarize yourself with building, deploying, debugging, what error messages look like, the simple things that can and do go wrong in the beginning, etc.
I don't go as far as using a diagramming tool sorry (I barely see the point in that for my job).
As soon as you start trying things you'll get the hang of it, even if in the beginning you have no idea of what's going on and why what you're doing works (or doesn't).
I usually compile and modify the examples, making them fit something that I need to do myself. I tend to do this while using and annotating the corresponding documents. Being a bit old school, the tool I usually use for diagramming is a pencil, or for the really complex stuff two or more colored pens.
I am by no means a seasoned programmer. In fact, I am learning C++ and I've been studying the language primarily from books. When I try to stray from the books (which happens a lot because I want to start contributing to programs like LibreOffice), for example, I find myself being lost. Furthermore, when I'm using functionality of the library, my implementations are wrong because I don't really understand how the library was created and/or why things need to be done that way. When I look at sample source code, I see how something is done, but I don't understand why it's done that way which leads to poor design of my programs. And as a result, I'm constantly guessing at how to do something and dealing with errors as I encounter them. Very unproductive and frustrating.
Going back to my book comment, two books which I have ready from cover to cover more than once are Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2010 and Starting Out with C++: Early Objects (7th Edition). What I really loved about Ivor Horton's book is that it contained thorough explanation of why something needs to be done a certain way. For example, before any Windows programming began, lots of explanation about how Windows works was given first. Understanding how and why things work a certain way really helps in how I develop software.
So to contribute my two pennies towards answering your question. I think the best approach is to pick up well written books and sit down and begin learning about that library, API, SDK, whatever in a structured approach that offers real-world examples along with explanations as to how and why things are implemented as they are.
I don't know if I totally missed your question, but I don't think I did.
Cheers!
This was my first post on this site. Don't rip me too hard. (:
What Latex styles do you use and where do you find them?
The reason I'm asking this is that it seems that some 99.9999% of all styles on the internet are copies of each other and of a physics exam paper
However, when you try to find a style for a paper like this one... Good luck, you are never going to find it.
Creating your own style is often not really an option, because it requires you to dig quite deep into the very advanced features of TeX/LaTeX and fighting your way against possible incompatibilities with document classes/packages/whatnot.
LaTeX was originally designed as a reasonably flexible system on which a few standard classes were distributed — that were themselves rather inflexible.
In the current state of affairs, if you want a custom layout, you need to write a few amount of supporting code yourself. How else would it happen? It's not like HTML+CSS gives you templates to work with; you need to implement the design yourself.
Creating your own style is often not really an option
Ah, well, not unless you know how to program in LaTeX!
Seriously, it all depends on knowing where to start and what to build on top of. That catalogue you give as an example would, in my opinion, be reasonably easy to do in LaTeX; it's just a bunch of boxes.
You could write something like
\newcommand\catalogueEntry[4]{%
\parbox[t]{0.23\linewidth}{\textbf{#1}}%
\hfill
\parbox[t]{0.23\linewidth}{\includegraphics{#2}}%
\hfill
\parbox[t]{0.23\linewidth}{\textbf{Characteristics}\\ #3}%
\hfill
\parbox[t]{0.23\linewidth}{\textbf{Application}\\ #4}
}
and use it as so
\catalogueEntry{Spotlights}{spotlight.jpg}
{Eclipse spotlights are...}
{Narrow to medium...}
This is just a basic illustration of what could be knocked up quickly — much more sophistication could be used to turn this into a more flexible system.
I see LaTeX as an extensible markup system. If you separate your markup from its presentation on the page, it's not too hard to get your information represented in whichever form you wish. But getting started is a little tricky, I have to admit; the learning curve for LaTeX programming can be rather steep.
Memoir is a more flexible document class than the default ones, and its manual is excellent.
Well I think CTAN is the best resource for LaTeX and TeX-related stuff. Also lots of scientific organizations provide their own styles, it makes sense to try tracing who was the author/publisher of the paper you like and check their websites.