WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is a term in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, a web page, or a slide presentation. WYSIWYG implies a user interface that allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document is being created.

History

The concept of WYSIWYG originated from the computer programming world, which up until the advent of WYSIWYG, relied on line commands. The first program to provide WYSIWYG features was a word processing program called Bravo. It was developed at Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi, and colleagues in 1974.

Functionality

In a WYSIWYG editor, the text being edited on screen appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product. This is different from traditional editing and formatting markup, such as TeX or HTML, where the layout commands or tags must be kept distinct from the actual text.

Advantages and Disadvantages

WYSIWYG editors have the advantage of being easy to use, making them more accessible to non-technical users. They also allow designers to create content visually, rather than by coding. However, they can sometimes limit the level of detail and flexibility in the design process, and may not produce perfectly clean code.

Examples

Examples of WYSIWYG editors include Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Adobe Dreamweaver. These programs allow users to create documents, spreadsheets, and web pages without needing to understand the underlying code or markup.

See Also

• Text editor
• HTML editor
• Desktop publishing

References

WYSIWYG Resources
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