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List:       quanta
Subject:    Re: [Quanta] A 'Hello!' and brief question...
From:       Eric Laffoon <sequitur () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-02-16 19:43:46
Message-ID: 200602161143.46472.sequitur () kde ! org
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On Wednesday 15 February 2006 5:15 pm, quanta@synersoft.be wrote:
> On Thu February 16 2006 00:41, Eric Laffoon wrote:
> > This is the difference between WYSIWYG and VPL. VPL, though not yet
> > mature, .
> >.
> >.
> >
> > We're concerned about the quality of our work, how we facilitate
> > standards compliance and your future relevance as a web developer using
> > our tools. Be thoughtful about what you advocate here. We have a little
> > higher standards. --
> > Eric Laffoon - Quanta+ Team Leader
> > http://quanta.kdewebdev.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > Quanta mailing list
> > Quanta@mail.kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/quanta
>
> Eric,
>
> Don't take offense at my post, my aim was only to help someone in need of a
> simple WYSIWYG solution (as I erroneously thought, with the 'mom & pop'
> mention).

I'm not offended. I just feel very strongly about what I know is right. BTW I 
own a "mom and pop" business. (http://kittyhooch.com)
>
> I was just passing along my experience : as a web developer, I use Perl or
> PHP scripts to generate HTML. I use an editor only for quick & dirty jobs
> or for prototyping. Recently, I had to build a table prototype. Instead of
> using Dreamweaver, I've investigated Linux tools. My first try has been
> Quanta. You are guessing the conclusion : impossible to fill a table with
> content (see my unanswered post about it). So I tried Nvu, and I filled my
> table in 10 minutes.

Our VPL developers don't always frequent the list. Quanta also has a text 
based table manager that is excellent. To my knowledge tables also work in 
VPL but as I primarily use PHP to render most of my text I rarely use VPL and 
don't like to answer those questions as our other developers are better 
qualified.

What I can tell you is that if you have a messed up table from a text edit or 
a glitch in a visual editor good luck trying to clean it up in anything but 
Quanta. Anybody who has used the structure tree knows how powerful it is at 
sorting out problems.
>
> That said, I've full respect for your work and I can perceive the
> difference between the two products.

Sure, but that's subjective and different for both of us.
>
> Finally, talking about standards, best practices, and the like, I remember
> my first PC programming efforts to avoid writing into the video RAM, only
> using the ANSI.SYS driver. You know what became the standard. OK, that's
> nothing to do with our subject, just a reminder that standards change and
> efficiency has its importance.

Don't hand me that bullshit! That has nothing to do with W3C compliance (other 
than to illustrate my point below) and WYSIWYG has very little whatsoever to 
do with efficiency. I was a professional web developer in pressure cooker 
contract work. We have former Dreamweaver users who understand that Quanta is 
more efficient and any professional programmer will tell you that an object 
oriented approach to large projects is more efficient and the only way to 
keep it managable. As such the least effective way to edit a web site is HTML 
in a plain text editor, the next least efficient way is WYSIWYG with a 
strictly visual tool and the most efficient way is with a designed framework 
where redundancies are handled systematically and you can just deal with 
content. Unfortunately writing that content visually without XSLT on the fly 
isn't so easy.

Sloppy shoddy typical WYSIWYG work does nothing but make more work for people 
while creating style drift and tossing aside dynamic capabilities. It is only 
quick in the context of "quick and dirty". Truly professional results can 
only be obtained by manually tweaking the generated work. However given that 
traditional stats show most of the cost of a web site in the first year is 
maintaining it the really obvious conclusion is that failing to recognize 
good design technique WYSIWYG tools make maintenance nightmares. I would 
compare it to choosing a cheap product for $10 while not wanting to spend $50 
on a good one that will last years, then finding out you have to replace the 
$10 product every month. The up front savings quickly evolve into costing 
orders of magnitude more than what would have made your life easier. My 
business has always been about placing value over cost. The up front 
investment in doing things right is more, but the long term effort is less. 

As for appreciating our work, it takes longer to achieve something the right 
way than to slap it together. Then again quick and convenient is cheese in a 
can... 

An as for standards, let's not forget that Microsoft and Netscape both tried 
to create their own worlds making developers lives miserable, but without 
standards a strong commercial entity can come in and take control. Looking at 
DRM and efforts to work out micropayments it seems clear that if an 
unscrupulous mega-corporation could develop defacto standards that were 
adopted by developers and demanded by users they could move  enough content 
to where they could create information have and have nots. All one needs to 
control to own the web is it's portals. The pursuit of standards and 
advancements in technology is the only thing keeping your children from 
living in Bill Gates' "perfect world".

Taken all in context I have to answer emails like yours as a matter of 
personal mission. I have a tremendous responsibility to my fellow man in 
overseeing this project and I don't take it lightly. 
>
> Sorry again for the trouble.

Then drop it.
>
> André
-- 
Eric Laffoon - Quanta+ Team Leader 
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org
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