LinuxPlanet: gnotebook: Bluefish: GNOME’s Happy HTML Hybrid

“…So I look askance at a lot of HTML editors, wishing that
they’d make at least make an attempt to bridge the gap between
WYSIWYG simpicity and the generation of clean markup. Being
afflicted by a dollop of laziness, myself, I tend to use GNU Emacs
and a handy extension for it: html-helper-mode for my markup. It
spares me having to type <p> every time I want a new
paragraph by providing ALT-p as a shortcut to produce the tag, it
has a bunch of handy tools for providing datestamps, enclosing a
URL in an anchor tag, and shortcuts for most of the tags you’ll
need. It even defers to good HTML practice by breaking out logical
and physical styles (<strong> as opposed to <b>). It’s
ideal for light markup, or for a quick jog to the memory for how a
forgotten tag should work.”

“Emacs, though, isn’t the answer for everybody. In fact, there
are few things more cruel than hyping it to the ceilings to a
cherished friend and then disappearing for a week while they go
through the process of training their fingers to cope with the sort
of digit acrobatics required to make things work.”

“A good partway solution would be to leverage the sort of
comprehensive and consistent look and feel a GUI can bring to the
computing experience without introducing the dumbing-down (and
bad-HTML-inducing) elements of a lot of HTML editors. A hybrid
between the friendlier interface provided by GUI’s and the economy
provided by a plain old text editor with good shortcuts, or even
just a plain old text editor.”

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