Re: Direct formatting STYLE attribute

Scott E. Preece ([email protected])
Thu, 7 Dec 1995 14:52:48 -0600


From: David Seibert <[email protected]>

| ... However, even if you use a style
| only once, is it really much harder to give it a short descriptive name
| that is defined in the header than it is to define it where it is used?
| Many authors may find that they are more productive, or that the quality
| of their work improves, if they first organize the text conceptually and
| then define the necessary styles in the header, instead of trying to
| organize text and define styles at the same time.

---

As I say, it's not *a lot* harder, it's just an irritant. Great products have irritants designed out.

Your last point, however, goes direcctly to my point. Yes, it makes a lot of sense to organize the generic, class-like styles in advance, because they have document-wide significance and are reusable. The places where anonymous styling makes sense are specifically where the intent of the styling is wholly local; I think the author's mental model is likely to NOT predict such uses until the text is actually being written; in fact, that might almost be a defining characteristic of appropriate uses...

scott

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scott preece
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