WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is an acronym for ‘what you see is what you get’ and is now considered a universal term for describing a computer program that allows users to edit something in real time on a computer monitor, that closely resembles the printed or screen rendering of the finished product. WYSIWYG generally is a term that implies the ability to directly manipulate a webpage or printed document, without having to type or remember names of layout commands. The actual meaning depends on the user’s perspective.

When a user is composing a presentation program like Microsoft’s PowerPoint, or Adobe’s Dreamweaver for web development, WYSIWYG means that the display precisely represents the appearance of the end product. For most desktop publishing programs, it also means that fonts, line breaks and pagination will be exactly duplicated when printed, as long as the printing device is calibrated in the programs printer settings.

Before the adoption of WYSIWYG technology and actual product application, text appeared in editors using the system standard typeface and style with very little indication of page margins, paragraph spacing, pagination, etc. Users were required to enter special non-printing control codes (now referred to as markup code tags) to indicate that some text should be in boldface, italics, or a different typeface or size. Learning and knowing the coding process for different computer applications was time consuming and often a reason to stick with what a user knew instead of trying different products on the market at the time.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, most home computers were not programmed for the more sophisticated capabilities that would allow for the graphical user interfaces required for WYSIWYG display. However, in the mid 1980s, things began to change with advancing technology that allowed the production of cheaper bitmapped displays, and WYSIWYG software started to appear for more popular computers, including Lisa Write for the Apple Lisa, released in 1983, and MacWrite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1984.

The phrase, WYSIWYG, was first used by an engineer at Triple I (Information International, Inc.), Larry Sinclair, to express the idea that what the user sees on the screen is what the user gets on the printer while using the “page layout system”, a pre-press typesetting system first shown at ANPS in Las Vegas. However, many believe it was first used by Flip Wilson’s drag persona “Geraldine” in the late 1960s on The Flip Wilson Show until 1974. Geraldine would often say it to excuse her quirky behavior.

The basic design goals of a WYSIWYG application is to ensure that a high quality product can be achieved on a variety of generic printers, on-screen output, and allow the creator of the document or website to visualize what the finished product will look like on a variety of browsers and monitors. Of course it is not possible to guarantee any or all of these- the goal is to at least achieve display quality.