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Mats Broberg wonders why when a large organisation (like AECMA, ATA, or any other
civilian/military organisation or body) sets out to create a
specification for the creation, maintenance and production of technical
documentation, why is such an infinitely small amount of effort put on
the part of the spec that defines how technical documentation complying
to this spec should look like when formatted as page-oriented output?
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Short answer to a long question:
The standards body was more interested in the content of the documentation and a standardized ordering of that content. SGML was invented to take care of some of the presentation issues.
When many of these standards and their predecessors werer developed, typewriters were the only tool available for the writer. The government printing office, or one of its contractors, took care of design and layout issues.
Believe it or not, word processors and desktop publishing are a _very_ recent phenomonem. :)
HTH
John Gilger
Seninor Technical Writer
Acres Gaming, Inc.
(a wholly owned subsidiary of IGT, Inc.)
