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Subject:Re: Decoupling editing and printing From:Janet_Swisher -at- TRILOGY -dot- COM Date:Fri, 20 Aug 1999 14:17:58 -0500
Sandy Harris wrote:
>Tossing out some likely fairly controversial notions in hopes of
>starting an interesting discussion:
>
>I'm wondering about the distinction between things an author should
>control and things the display or printing program, using a style
>sheet for its user's preferences, should control.
This kind of distinction is what underlies markup systems like SGML, XML,
LaTeX and others. They separate content from structure from display. For
example, in XML, the document file contains the content, with structured
markup; the Document Type Definition defines the allowable structures; and
the style sheet (CSS or XSL) defines how those structures are displayed.
You can radically alter the display by substituting a different style
sheet. This kind of logical distinction was obvious back in the mainframe
era when WYSIWYG wasn't possible. The PC world is only just realizing the
usefulness of such ideas.
