Re: Discussion

Tony Sanders ([email protected])
Thu, 12 Aug 1993 20:16:34 -0500


Nat sez:
> http://www.vuw.ac.nz/non-local/gnat/converters.html
> is a controversial wee document about where I think WWW markup should
> be going.
They both make efforts to encode the semantics of the document (for
instance, ``this is a heading'', ``this is emphasised text'') rather
than attempting to encode the presentation of the document (for
instance, ``this is 9pt Roman'', ``this is centred, bold, text'').
I argue that this is not a sensible direction to take.

But it is sensible, as soon as you specify *real* presentation it's not
portable. However...

What you call "abstract presentation" is exactly what we are doing now.
Most of the things you propose are *already* in HTML+, (some even back
washed into HTML like <HR> and <BR>) so what is the problem?

Style Guides then go a BIG step further in allowing authors to
design layout.

--sanders