[4] Before the adoption of WYSIWYG techniques, text appeared in editors using the system standard typeface and style with little indication of layout (margins, spacing, etc.).
The use of markup tags and codes remains popular today in some applications due to their ability to store complex formatting information.
When the tags are made visible in the editor, however, they occupy space in the unformatted text, and as a result can disrupt the desired layout and flow.
[6] The Alto monitor (72 PPI, based on the typographic unit) was designed so that one full page of text could be seen and then printed on the first laser printers.
[7] In late 1978, in parallel with but independent of the work at Xerox PARC, Hewlett-Packard developed and released the first commercial WYSIWYG software application for producing overhead slides (or what today are referred to as presentation graphics).
[10] In 1983, the Weekly Reader advertised its Stickybear educational software with the slogan "what you see is what you get", with photographs of its Apple II graphics,[11] but home computers of the 1970s and early 1980s lacked the sophisticated graphics capabilities necessary to display WYSIWYG documents, meaning that such applications were usually confined to limited-purpose, high-end workstations (such as the IBM Displaywriter System) that were too expensive for the general public to afford.