wysiwyg = What You See Is What You Get. Meaning you don't enter any kind of code, but you rather just see what you are doing. Want to make a text bold, press the corresponding button and the marked text appears bold. If you don't use a wysiwyg editor you would see something like [bold]My Bold Text[/bold]. The term wysiwyg is mainly used in the HTML world.
Markup languages
HTML is a markup language. You are marking your text with statements about how the text should be displayed. There are though other markup languages:
- TeX (or Latex)
All studens probably know what one, as it has strong academic roots. Very well for formulas and other scientific stuff. - XML
Probably everybody has been in touch with XML. XHTML is a form of XML <mytag>Hello World</mytag> - GML
Sorry, don't know that one. Seems to be an ancestor of HTML and TeX. - HTML
We all know that one. - BBcode
Mostly used in forums, where one don't want to use a wysiwyg editor (for whatever reason) but also want to give users the possibility to "style" their posts. They look like [italic]here is my stuff[/italic] that.
To most of these markup languages there's also a corresponding wysiwyg editor.
HTML
It's easy and there's plenty of such wysiwyg editors: Microsoft Word, Dreamweaver, Amaya, Golive (not sold anymore), Microsoft Expression, NVU. There's actually a nice list on Smashing Magazine.
XML
Don't have much experience, but just look at the google search results.
TeX
I've been working with MiKTeX and LyX.
GML & BBcode
Don't know of any editor for that.
Pros and Cons of wysiwyg
| Pros | Cons |
| Very easy to learn and use. User sees directly what he gets. | You don't have full control. You are dependant on your editor. |
| Wysiwyg editor might have automation integrated | HTML: For SEO reasons, your editor might now always produce the best HTML code (advantages of clean content markup) |
| Syntax erros are not possible | Options provided by the editor might mislead the user to do ugly things. |
I love wysiwyg editors. In fact, I wrote this article using a Wysiwyg editor, but in this same article here, the editor didn't provide me with the option of writing a table. So I could either find some configuration option for wordpress or just go ahead and quickly write the HTML myself (which I did). It's always good to know the underlying technic, but then in the daily work, I'm too lazy to write all the markup myself.
Using a wysiwyg editor is like drawing with a given pattern. You can never fully express your creativity.
And to all you students out their: Writing a diploma thesis on Word can be a pain (at least on version < 2003). Latex is so much nicer!