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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Difference between Word Processor and text editor is in WYSIWYG mode of operation.

<graybeard> No, that's the difference between a page layout system and a word processor. </graybeard>

More seriously, word processor is to the tuple (natural language, text editor) as IDE is to the tuple (programming language, text editor). WYSIWYG is a (very, now) common feature of word processors like visual designers are a common feature of an GUI development focussed IDEs, but its not the definition of the category.

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Encyclopedia Britannica:

> word processor, computer program used to write and revise documents, compose the layout of the text, and preview on a computer monitor how the printed copy will appear. The last capability is known as “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG; pronounced wi-zē-wig).

and

> Before word processors were available, text-editing programs offered the basic editing capabilities of word processing but without WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG depends on high-resolution bit-mapped computer graphics displays.

So encyclopaedical definition of WP puts WYSIWYG as definitive characteristic of WP from TE.

I'm not sure what to say here other than this statement is demonstrably false:

"Before word processors were available, text-editing programs offered the basic editing capabilities of word processing but without WYSIWYG."

There are many, many, many of us who not only have heard of but actually once used word processors—programs or even devices that were called "word processors" as such—years before GUI, WYSIWYG word processors came on the scene.

This is the article you're referencing:

https://www.britannica.com/technology/word-processor

but the corresponding Wikipedia pages have more of the history of word processing, and an image search for "word processor" will turn up plennnnnnnty of images of things that are emphatically not WYSIWYG.

Well, they are wrong then, aren't they?

Of course it's 2023, and Encyclopedia Britannica is not exactly in its best years, or the best source for canonical IT information.

Unlike Encyclopedia Britannica editors, here we have people who wrote, sold, and have used word processors without WYSIWYG in the 80s and even 90s, and they were absolutely known as word processors. In fact the first WYSIWYG offering ones, were often called "WYSIWYG word processors" to differentiate them.

Not that "and preview on a computer monitor how the printed copy will appear" is not what you think it is, in other words, it's not live "WYSIWYG" mode, MS Word-style. It also describes the mere ability to preview a rendering of the final page (as will be printed), while you do your layout in another mode. Kind of like Markdown preview today.

This isn’t right. Programs like Wordstar and WordPerfect (4.2 and earlier) were text mode only. What distinguishes them from text editors are things like default word wrap, spell check, footnotes, page numbers, and printer interfaces.

When the Mac (and later Windows) came out, desktop publishing became mainstream, with WYSIWIG fonts and graphics and fancy configurable layout.

For a little while in the early nineties, I remember the press talking about some programs like MS Word for Windows as being “Word Publishing”, in that they were word processors with some of the features of desktop publishing software.

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