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RE: Demand for web services

• To: "'Doug Rudder'" <drudder@d...>,"'Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)'" <len.bullard@i...>,"'Xasima Xirohata'" <xasima@g...>,<joe@r...>
• Subject: RE: Demand for web services
• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 16:19:29 +0100
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <B2E776DBE74D76439BA590B9C12F844F010FDFC4@FACAPPS1>
• Thread-index: AcWWpH8IpzYhZ79KSE+QaMXAQJb1YgABrRWw

> We worked hard to get our authors and editors to quit
> thinking about specific presentation and focus on content and structure
> (it's a fragile thing still); please, please don't tell them it's just a
myth!

It will always be a fragile thing because human readers extract so much
information by "reading between the lines", and specifically from the
presentation. If a paragraph is in a smaller font than the surrounding
paragraphs that says something to me*. But the goal of persuading authors to
make that "something" explicit - to say WHY they want to use a smaller font,
so that the designer can choose an alternative way of conveying the subtle
meaning - is a perfectly valid one, and this goal indeed lies behind a lot
of the adoption of XML.

I'm afraid I didn't understand Xasima's argument to the contrary.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

* I remember in the early days of word processors someone saying to me that
if I wanted people to read a document as an early draft and treat it
accordingly, I should use a typewriter font and double line spacing...

• References:
  • RE: Demand for web services
    • From: Doug Rudder <drudder@d...>

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