Broff and a proposed net project

[Zigurd R. Mednieks]

Layout (formatting), and text entry have traditionally been separated.
While not all traditions are worth carrying forward, there usually is
some reason for their existence in the first place: Text entry must be
highly interactive and responsive, while text formatting must be very
powerful and flexible. The computer power it takes to provide the
flexibility and power for formatting is much greater than that required
by, say, emacs. Due to this imbalence, putting formatting functions in
an editor frequently causes the editor to become unacceptably slow. 
Also, formatting and text entry have two separate goals. Text entry
provides content, formatting provides form.

Most of the people involved in this discussion are familiar with
powerful text editors, but many of us are quite unaware of how much
effort goes into laying out a book or newspaper with a computerized
layout system. Further, computer layout systems are undergoing a
revolution in functionality and expressive power. And we are just
beginning to understand how to represent the graphic information that is
typically found on the printed page.

For these reasons I don't expect to see an editor that combines layout
functions with text entry. An interactive layout program, even a slow
one, that allows graphics to be mreged with text, pictures to be
halftone-screened, and page layout to be easily manipulated would be
well worth hacking.

Cheers,
Zig