Re: I agree with Eric

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Re: I agree with Eric
by Eric Laffoon on Thursday 12/Sep/2002, @02:16

Thanks for your vote of confidence Chris. You're right about holding off for more reasons than you may realize. As far as bug fixing goes I always like to think we just fixed the last of them. ;-) I can dream. There are a lot more features to add too. However I do most of my pages from PHP classes, functions, include files, data lookups and such. I usually abstract my content from my layout too so that I can take an XML file and plug it in for content while we can change the look and layout of the site by loading new structure files, artwork and style sheets. How the hell am I supposed to do this with WYSIWYG and how do I keep it from slowing me down and murdering my API?

Personally I agree with many programmeers that drawing a web site pretty much is a delusional procedure of painting a static layout integrated into your content which is a maintenence hassle. Of course I guess the pros can bill as much as 80% of the first year cost of a web site to maintenence and profit by it but I'd rather spend time on creative projects. Unless I can address issues of real programmers I don't even want to begin WYSIWYG. I happen to believe I can do it in a way that takes the most efficient path through both worlds so that a well educated Quanta user simply smokes those using other tools.

> Quanta would be closer to Macromedia Homesite - another "real" HTML editor and not a WYSIWYG one.

Actually the sooner people turn that around to say Homesite is closer to Quanta and then follow up with "actually Quanta blows it away" the happier I am. I hear this and that about it all the time and then explain features that Quanta has that they don't even know about along with how to do what they say they wished it did. Clearly I need to do some tutorials. BTW Quanta is no longer an HTML editor either. HTML is being stripped from Quanta and only returned as a plugin. Soon you will be able to get "DTD packs" which inlcude the DTD, definition.rc, tag files, toolbars, menu items and some base templates. You could choose to use Quanta for KDE DocBook and XML and never even have HTML capabilities in it.

> People should understand that they are 2, distinctly different types of HTML editors

Actually I kind of enjoy pointing out what is new. ;-) You're fundementally right about the differences... but the third and new animal, which Quanta is has a new definition. It is a markup and scripting editor targeted at electronic presentation media, primarily web based. Since HTML 4.01 is the last specification coming from the W3C and XHTML is what follows then we can say that HTML is in fact a dead language. It's deprication is a matter of course... and therefore because Quanta is by nature DTD agnostic and is being designed to adapt more and more functionality from a DTD or XML schema then we can make another statement. There are two kinds of web editing tools. Those that revolve around dead language technology and Quanta which is being designed to instantly adapt to whatever technology is next.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who may think I'm a bit strange. But it occured to me an open source focus on static application of a dead language was a very bad course for us... and an open source foundation that empowered and enticed developers to lead the bleeding edge would be very good for us... Us being the open source oriented web developer. My goal is to make a tool that adapts so blindingly fast that you will play with and master what's new way before everyone else. Combined with our extensibility goals we become the one thing no proprietary vendor dares to strive for... a tool where updates appear before developers can even plan them. M$ may have the browser market and Apache the server market... what stands between them is the development environment. If Quanta on KDE can become incredibly compelling how many crummy broken web sites do you think you will see in a few years?

Think about it. We can't take the lead by always following. And we can't do WYSIWYG until we can do it in such a way that it does a lot more than draw HTML. There are two ways to do things... right or over. ;-)

Related Links

·   Articles on Applications
·   Also by Eric Laffoon
·   Contact author

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Re: I agree with Eric
by Chris Spencer on Thursday 12/Sep/2002, @04:24

Well I walked away from html over a year ago, and went the path of computer programming. I'm sure you can tell by my ignorance of all the latests technology in web building. :-) I didn't get any deeper into it than HTML, then CSS, then basic Java Script - so I'm a bit ignorant on topics such as XHTML and others. I'm always open to new knowledge though lol

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