Slang Dictionary
WYSIAYG
/wiz'ee-ayg/ adj. Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is _All_ You Get"; an unhappy variant of
WYSIWYG. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth; they often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a command-style interface. When this happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG 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 for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like
TeX or Unix's
troff becomes not just desirable but a necessity. Compare
YAFIYGI.
