Not to me. I was so happy when I tried MacWrite on my new (early 1984) Macintosh. I enjoy "fighting myself" because I am very unwilling to separate content and appearance. InDesign provides me with some succor but nowhere near what I would like. It is not visual enough. Why can't I align text by dragging a vertical line onto the text and request alignment to that? After all, this can be done with figures in InDesign, and unlike tabs, you get an immediate sense of what the result of the alignment will look like.

(A sad setback in word processing is Apple's Pages. It has two modes "word processing" and "page layout". I hope Larry Tesler never encountered it.)

Changing the text layout automatically re-flows the text across the text boxes. That means: adding/removing a text box; editing the properties of a text box; changing the content in the linked RTF; or moving another element to partially overlap a text box, when the box is set to make the text dodge intrusive elements. You don't have to worry about resizing a text box to make room for something; that text just appears in the next box and pushes everything down.

And changing the visual layout does absolutely nothing to the text. That is: moving any of the text boxes, or moving/creating/destroying any element other than a text box, as long as this doesn't affect overlap; editing text boxes of a different linked document, or static text boxes (e.g. a masthead); etc. So, visual design tweaks are guaranteed not to wreck a finished typography pass, even if that means you're sliding the margins around.

For the sake of anyone who hasn't tried a system like this: picture creating an HTML CSS layout, with your composition embedded in a <div> with `overflow: scroll;`... but then picture a magical new <viewport> element, that provides distinct viewports onto a single scrolling container's render-context at different (contiguous, non-overlapping) scroll offsets. You could use such an element to implement CSS columns—but also any number of other arbitrary layouts.

Thank you for getting back to me.

the main reason they do it that way is because they have different people doing the writing and the layout tasks.

but the writers of today and tomorrow are much more likely to be self-publishers, who are pricing their work such that they don't have the margin to employ others to do layout.

now, it's true that some people are incapable of doing both tasks at once, and find themselves procrastinating by doing one task when they should be doing the other.

those people will have to learn how to fix that bad habit.

but it is equally true that other people are quite capable of doing both tasks at the same time, and they'll typically do the complete job in much faster time doing both at once.

and they often end up doing a much better job too, because they're working with a tight feedback loop between the tasks.

now, i do agree with you that a light-markup editor can enhance such a feedback loop. a 2-pane setup, a la the ghost interface, requires the entry of clean text and couples it with a display that lets a writer confirm they will get the output they want.

(indesign is outdated. if you need a .pdf today, repurpose your .html using prince, renting it on a monthly basis via docraptor. that way, a single input creates .html, .epub, .mobi, and .pdf.)

You realize that I'm not talking about a problem that you either have or you don't, but one that everyone has to some degree, right? Anything that's a matter of willpower, some people will have less of; and, in fact, everyone will have less of as things happen to them that deplete their willpower throughout the day. Consider the needs of "you at 4:30PM on a Friday"—they find it much harder than you do to be productive, right? Well, that's why things like distractionless editors exist. So motivated-you can make a choice (use a spartan editor) that boxes unmotivated-you into having nothing else to do but work.

> and they often end up doing a much better job too, because they're working with a tight feedback loop between the tasks.

I do agree with this. But keep in mind that you don't need any special kind of program to accomplish this. You can have your (auto-reloading-text-boxes) layout program open in one window, and your (auto-saving) composition program open in the other, maybe across two monitors. Works just as well, and—unlike a "composition with preview" style editor—the "preview" pane is instead a real WYSIWYG editor for the layout and typography, as well as showing the state of your composition.

> indesign is outdated

Yeah, true. It's better to have a format that actually produces digital-native results as well. It's (sadly) not usually feasible in large orgs, given that there are separate teams with separate skillsets that want to take one composition as input and run it through two separate (web and desktop) publishing pipelines. Even if you can align them all on the same software, attempting to do any "layout rule-sharing" is a lot like trying to get the mobile and desktop frontends of an app to share code.

> repurpose your .html

That's one (valid) approach, sure. The other one (that I personally favor) is to start with the print layout, in a desktop publishing program that happens to use a layout format that is a superset of HTML+CSS, which gives you the ability to add CSS media queries to said document to specify how it should render when exported as an ePub or as HTML.

One example of such a digital-native desktop publishing program is iBooks Author. You get a proprietary, fixed-layout "rich eBook" format from it by default; it exports to PDF at full fidelity (though you lose some TOC metadata); but it also exports to ePub and HTML.

It's honestly a shame that the EPUB 3.0 standard hasn't seen traction or gotten an equivalent authoring experience from anyone, because it's basically the same idea but not proprietary. It's a perfect "mother format" to reduce down to assets for every kind of content channel you'd care to use.

i don't see it that way. i especially don't see it as involving "willpower". i see it more as a specific skill.

now, as i said quite clearly, some people lack the skill. and some of those people will be totally unable to learn it. the most unfortunate ones should adopt your 2-stage workflow.

but most people can learn to drop the procrastination habit and pick up the skill of simultaneous writing and layout.

plus, on the other side, some people thrive on that method. not just do they not "have a problem" with it, to any degree, but they actually perform better when they work in that way.

> It's (sadly) not usually feasible in large orgs, given that there are separate teams with separate skillsets

i agree that such organizations won't change their workflow.

but i'm not really all that interested in empowering _them_.

> iBooks Author

> It's honestly a shame that the EPUB 3.0 standard

it's much better if i don't get started on either of those topics... :+)