Re: inexpensive wysiwyg

<.div id="soapbox">
Seems to me there's a bigger issue here than just trying to help 
someone maintain a carefully designed page with a simple editor. It 
implies to the non-expert that web design is something simple that 
anyone can do. I see a parallel with what happened when Windows word 
processors landed on everyone's desk. So many people believed 
Mickey$oft's propaganda that producing high quality output was a 
doddle and anyone could do it. What you see coming out of so many 
offices now is unadulterated garbage in presentation terms. Haven't 
we all seen the company newsletter done in MS Publisher (one of 
Mickey$soft's better products) by a secretary who has no idea of 
design, no training, who doesn't want the job anyway and has to cope 
with all the egos and missed deadlines as well as doing her (it's 
always 'her') regular job?

Before anyone flames me I mean no disrespect to any secretary past, 
present or future who gets saddled with this job. Before web design, 
I was saddled with it as well, but I have design and typography 
training. And there's the problem: every bloody person thought their 
opinion of my design was as valid as mine, and it darn well wasn't 
true.  My old company's house typeface is Gill Sans, which I love, 
and I know it needs a short measure and generous leading to look the 
way Eric Gill designed it. "Can you sqeeze it up a bit?" Grrrrrrr. 
The average person wouldn't know what leading is if it jumped up and 
bit them, never mind how to pronounce it. The consequence is that 
professional typographers like me struggle and have to diversify, and 
the world abounds with ugliness in print.

If we're not careful we're going the same way with web design; we're 
going to devalue our skills and let everyone think they can do it, or 
at least can maintain a site we've designed. I think we should be 
working to achieve exactly the opposite. Not everyone *can* do it.

Anyone?
<./div>

Freda
-- 
The letters dance in their seats. Sometimes they get up and dance in 
the aisles and margins. -Robert Bringhurst. 

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