Re: "Why is emacs so square?"

[Bob Newell]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> This is not an issue for longer documents, since it doesn't crucially
> matter
> where the page breaks are in those.

Just as a point of interest: page breaks definitely can matter
in longer documents. I've done quite a number of books with
Emacs/LaTeX, and in doing text layout I have to take into
account widows and orphans--- for instance, having a single
line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page is a no-no, and
page breaks have to be manipulated to avoid bad typography.

That said, I've found that even for longish books with many
diagrams (my most extreme example was nearly 800 pages), the
compile and view process was fast enough not to get in the
way, and corrections and changes go very fast if using
something like synctex (I believe that's the correct name).

This is not to say that I don't see the need for WYSIWYG on
graphics-intense publications; for instance I couldn't see
doing a comic book in emacs.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB