The key problem with WYSIWYG is that it doesn't exist any more. The key point as I read of the original article was that Word is a WYSIWYG tool aimed at print.
The Slate article could have been a lot better if the author noted the distinction between WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM. Followed immediately by the standard observation that WYSIWYM is a tougher nut. Most of the solutions I'm familiar with rely on either markup (HTML, LaTeX, Wiki parkup, markdown, etc.) or structural conventions (my text docs strongly resemble 1970s typewritten documents in line-length, paragraph style, etc. formats).
The great thing about LaTeX is that your document is entirely semantic, and the style is applied by the stylesheet. With tools such as Lyx, this is reasonably intuitive, though stylesheet production itself is a nontrivial task. Similar concepts exist for Web, obviously, with HTML and CSS.
The problem is that for the typical user, print remains a simple conceptual model to understand, regardless of how brittle it is in a world with mulitple output formats. There's been a lot of thought put into this area over decades, and for a good tool to emerge and become prominant is yet another tough nut.
I agree (from a limited and somewhat old exposure) with your assessment of Sharepoint. I've mostly seen it used as "Christmas Tree" in which individual document blobs (or other objects) are hung, rather than a Wiki in which documents are interlinked, readily refactorable, and dynamic.
The Slate article could have been a lot better if the author noted the distinction between WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM. Followed immediately by the standard observation that WYSIWYM is a tougher nut. Most of the solutions I'm familiar with rely on either markup (HTML, LaTeX, Wiki parkup, markdown, etc.) or structural conventions (my text docs strongly resemble 1970s typewritten documents in line-length, paragraph style, etc. formats).
The great thing about LaTeX is that your document is entirely semantic, and the style is applied by the stylesheet. With tools such as Lyx, this is reasonably intuitive, though stylesheet production itself is a nontrivial task. Similar concepts exist for Web, obviously, with HTML and CSS.
The problem is that for the typical user, print remains a simple conceptual model to understand, regardless of how brittle it is in a world with mulitple output formats. There's been a lot of thought put into this area over decades, and for a good tool to emerge and become prominant is yet another tough nut.
I agree (from a limited and somewhat old exposure) with your assessment of Sharepoint. I've mostly seen it used as "Christmas Tree" in which individual document blobs (or other objects) are hung, rather than a Wiki in which documents are interlinked, readily refactorable, and dynamic.