tjout

I just stumbled upon a blogpost by Lindsey Kuper about her prefering plain text over a complex WYSIWYG blogging framework.

Being a minimalist (borderline obsessed sometimes) when it comes to software I wholeheartedly agree with her about the ease of administration and migration. Having everything under version control feels save and one can simply start fiddeling away without having to fear breaking something.

Not for everybody

I do not think however that this kind of setup is for everybody. Some of my friends are not as technically inclined as I am and I know for a fact that a plain text editor and typing out some form of Markup would already stretch their abilities thin. Most never used a console before and for some even the MacOS terminal is terrifying dark magic. For those users a editor that resembles Libreoffice or Word is the only way they can publish something other than a post on Facebook or Twitter.

Summary

Whilst the "ease" of plain text editing and writing is second nature to folks like me who code in their free time and can get lost in the terminal for hours on end, WYSIWYG is ideal for all those that just want to get stuff out there and do not care how that works behind the scenes.