Home > WYSIWYG

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1 Meaning

• A description of a user interface that allows the user to view the end result while the document or graphic character is being created.
• Allows the user to concentrate entirely on how the content should appear, although having the trade-off of not having the results being easily fine-tuned.
• Also used to describe specifically a web-page creation program in which the user creates the webpage visually, while the program generates the HTML for it.

Most programs, even Microsoft Office, are not truly WYSIWYG since printing and page formatting are still hidden from view.

2 Historical notes

• The phrase was originated by John Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s when the first WYSIWYG editor, Bravo was created on the Alto. The Alto monitor (72 pixels per inch) was designed so that one full page of text could be seen and then printed on the first laser printers. When the text was laid out on the screen 72 PPI font metric files were used, but when printed 300 PPI files were used -- thus one would occasionally find characters and words slightly off, a problem that continues to this day. (72 PPI came from the standard of 72 "points" per inch used in the commercial printing industry.)
• Seybold and the researchers at PARC were simply reappropriating a popular catchphrase of the time originated by "Geraldine", a character on The Flip Wilson Show, ( 1970- 1974). In addition to "What you see is what you get!", this character also popularized "The Devil made me do it!"
• The Apple Macintosh system was originally designed so that the screen resolution and the resolution of the dot-matrix printers sold by Apple were easily scaled: 72 PPI for the screen and 144 DPIDots per inch DPI is a measure of printing resolution, in particular the number of individual dots of ink a printer or toner can produce within a linear one-inch space. ink jet printer at draft quality. Actual size is approximately 0. 25 inches square. for the printers. Thus, the on-screen output of programs such as MacWriteMacWrite was a word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It is historically important as it is the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG operation, with multiple fonts a and MacPaintMacPaint is a bitmap-based image editing computer program that was produced by Apple Computer for bundling with their Macintosh personal computer. After being "forcibly ignored" for some time due to developer backlash, Apple eventually formed Claris to ma were easily translated to the printer output and allowed WYSIWYG. With the introduction of laser printerA laser printer is a common type of computer printer that produces good quality printing, and is able to produce graphics. The process is very similar to the type of dry process photocopier first produced by Xerox. Indeed, the first laser printer was creas, with resolutions not even multiples of the screen resolution, true WYSIWYG vanished.
• Charles SimonyiCharles Simonyi is a computer software developer who, as the head of Microsoft's application software group, oversaw the creation of that company's flagship applications. Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary on September 10, 1948. While in high school he, the PARC researcher responsible for Bravo, joined MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation , headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, is the world's largest software company (with over 50,000 employees in various countries, as of May 2004). Microsoft develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of software in 1981Events January-February January Sarawak Chamber found January 1 Greece enters the EEC January 1 Palau becomes self-governing January 4 Sheffield police arrests Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper January 16 Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette D to start development of application programs at Microsoft. Hence, Bravo can be seen as the direct ancestor of Microsoft Word.