Talk:1341: Types of Editors

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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The horse is a noble animal; refers to this? http://www.marciafarquhar.com/artwork/the-horse-is-a-noble-animal/ --NSDCars5 (talk) 13:40, 14 March 2014 (UTC)NSDCars5

Title text and last frame are a reference to the book "Machine of Death", a collection of short stories in which a machine can tell a person a word, that is in some way related to how they will die. 173.245.53.198 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Incidentally, Munroe himself wrote a story in that anthology. Apparently, it was titled "?" Has anyone read it?199.27.128.108 08:14, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

SPOILER ALERT In the machine of death story from Randal the protagonist struggles with the fact the machine can predict death, it does not fit his world picture. He decides the only way to win is not to play so he never reads his slip of paper and goes to work starting fires to form an huge question mark. In the end he decides to stay in one place to ether die there from hunger and thirst or any other way. He hopes the slip of paper says "murder" instead of anything else as in the machine murdered him. /SPOILER ALERT 62.177.168.231 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There are also WYSIWYM editors: "what you see is what you mean", where editor marks the content according to its meaning (e.g. section title), but not necessarily exactly as it would appear in presentation. The main advantage of this system is the total separation of presentation and content. Examples include LyX, FrameMaker, WYMeditor, CodeMirror. --JakubNarebski (talk) 08:44, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

And let's not forget WYGIWYG (wiggywig), "What you get is what you get" A joking reference to the imperfection of certain well-known word processors. At this moment, someone out there is writing a machineofdeath-mode for Emacs. Jim E (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Anyone know that "horse" reference? It sounds familiar but I can't place it. 108.162.216.9 16:34, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if it's relevant, but there's a sculpture titled "The Horse is a Noble Animal". [1][2] Wwoods (talk) 19:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

What about Death Note? Sounds a bit like WYSIHYD is a nerfed version of the Death Note. --108.162.215.8 17:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

It's just a correlation. 108.162.237.64 17:16, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Are you Randall? If not, you do not know that. 108.162.249.215 01:53, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
I vote to add a reference in a Trivia section, as I've seen Trivias here deviating that much. 108.162.219.125 04:34, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I think this needs an incomplete flag. It doesn't make a clear distinction between the comic and the real-world context, and the latter isn't sufficiently explained. --Mynotoar (talk) 18:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Was my indentation of the transcript too much? I thought it added to the understanding of the layout and flow. Jarod997 (talk) 12:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe that no one has made a WYSITUTWYG editor on the internet yet, given that there are already hell tetris machines. Hppavilion1 (talk) 04:22, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

WYSIHYD reminds me of the "goto" programmer getting attacked by a velociraptor http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/292 108.162.238.182 18:20, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

HORSE reference

Preeeeeeeeetty certain this refers to the briefly famous, rather bizarre "Horse eBooks" twitter account which was presumably set up as some kind of Markov-chain based quotation engine intended to promote the service by spewing out famous phrases from the books in their collection, but instead ended up generating all kinds of amusing nonsense, much of it on the subject of equines. It may or may not still be operating ... I don't twitter much, so finding out will take a moment or two... (gets curious, actually checks)

...well, it's still there, but it hasn't updated in a while: [[3]] ... 141.101.98.150 09:08, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Given the nature of Horse_ebooks and the fact that xkcd has referenced it before (under "Twitter"), I think this is certainly possible. (The above-stated reference to the statue could simultaneously be true.) L-Space Traveler (talk) 01:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


I just put together this comic in real life. LINK: http://1314.fluffycraft.net/ Check it out!!!! 162.158.72.35 03:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC) Gus

How I pronouce them: wizz-ee-wig wizz-en-wig wizz-etut-wig wizz-ee-hid Awoo is legal | (you can't) change my mind (talk) 22:09, 2 October 2018 (UTC)