What You See Is All You Get


What You See Is All You Get

(jargon)(WYSIAYG) /wiz'ee-ayg/ Describes a user interfaceunder which "What You See Is *All* You Get"; an unhappyvariant of WYSIWYG. Visual, "point-and-drool interfaces"are easy to learn but often lack depth; they often frustrateadvanced users who would be better served by a command-styleinterface. When this happens, the frustrated user has aWYSIAYG problem.

This term is most often used of editors, word processors,and document formatting programs. WYSIWYG "desktop publishing" programs, for example, are a clear win forcreating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics inthem, especially things like newsletters and presentationslides. When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on theother hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quicklyruns into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power andflexibility of a command-driven formatter like TeX orUnix's troff becomes not just desirable but a necessity.

Compare YAFIYGI.