Re. SGML structure clarification

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

     Chet Ensign correctly corrects me by pointing out that SGML does
     indeed determine the logical structure of a document (e.g., the
     component "body text" follows the component "heading"). Mea culpa, but
     that wasn't what I meant in my original posting re. moving text
     directly from online to paper. (Hey, I'm just an editor... no one ever
     said I could write clearly!)

     What I was getting at, albeit unclearly, was the following:
     1. Can you structure a document visually so that the same image works
     equally well online and on paper? Thus, you'd only have to do the page
     layout/design once. (SGML determines only structure, not appearance,
     so it doesn't solve this part of the problem.)
     2. Can you structure the flow of information so that the online
     sequence works equally well on paper? Thus, you could "simply" [sic]
     dump the online file to the printer and get a linear printout (on
     paper) that works as well as the nonlinear online sequence. Although
     SGML tells you how to order components (e.g., body text follows
     heading), I'm not aware that it inherently defines that paragraph 73
     comes logically after paragraph 27, but before paragraph 217 when you
     print out the info. Now you could probably sequence your paragraphs in
     this order directly in the SGML-tagged document, but does this solve
     the problem?

     Much more specifically yours,
     --Geoff Hart    #8^{)}
     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

     Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
     our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.