WYSIWYG
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
WYSIWYG
(pronounced "whizzy-wig") is an acronym
for What You See Is
What You Get, and is used
in computing
to refer to the technology that makes sure the image seen on the screen
corresponds to what is printed out on paper. Today this is expected for word
processors but in other situations, like HTML,
this is not the case.
The
Apple
Macintosh system was originally designed so that the screen resolution and
the resolution of the dot-matrix
printers sold by Apple were identically 72 dpi;
thus, the on-screen output of programs such as MacWrite
and MacPaint
were identical to the printer output, literally WYSIWYG. With the introduction
of laser
printers, with resolutions higher than the screen resolution, true WYSIWYG
vanished.
Other
acronyms
In
order of increasing obscurity:
- WYSIWYG
- What You See Is What You Get (basic)
- WYSIAYG
- What You See Is All You Get (used by computer programmers who point out
that a style of "heading" that refers to a specification
of "Helvetica
15 bold" provides more useful information than a style of
"Helvetica 15 bold" every time a heading is used)
- WYSIAWYG
- What You See Is Almost What You Get (most text editing programs)
- WYSIWYM
- What You See Is What You Mean (You see what best conveys the message)
- WYSIMOLWYG
- What You See Is More Or Less What You Get (another way of stating WYSIAWYG)
- WYTYSIWYTYG
- What You Think You See Is What You Think You Get (Pronounced Whit-iss-ee-whit-ig)
(When a program claims to be WYSIWYG but isn't)
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 in how the content should appear, although
having the trade-off of not have 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 writes the HTML (hypertext
markup language) for it
- most
programs, even Microsoft
Office, are not WYSIWYG since printing and page formatting are still
hidden from view
as of 2002, users expect a more-or-less WYSIWYG
interactive editing view
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