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Re: Caveat Emptor (was: Excellent quote from Len Bullard)

• From: Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 22:00:26 +0100

On 10/15/2013 03:04 PM, Sean McGrath wrote:
> [Len Bullard]
> 
>> When you separate semantics out of content, you get certain
>> advantages of reusability and a degree of independence from the
>> application of note, but you pay for it with a lot of analysis,
>> experimenting and potential ambiguities in communications. Caveat
>> emptor.

The first time round. Once you establish the framework for a class of
documents, the payback comes from the repeatability.

> Exactly right with one caveat :-) Sometimes, it simple isn't possible
> to separate the semantics because of situations where aspects of the 
> presentation *are* the semantics.
> 
> http://www.propylon.com/news/ctoarticles/Separating_Content_from_Presentation_20020725.html

I'm glad you mentioned typography, because it's a canon of markup design
that you don't provide for presentation in the document, because that
goes in the stylesheet. Until you write a book on typography or a manual
for a typographic system. Then you may need to mark something as being
in italics precisely *because* it is meant to illustrate italics. Whence
the shim I did for DocBook (which I have failed to rewrite in RNG and
distribute as promised, because I was busy with something else...Real
Soon Now... :-)

///Peter

• References:
  • Caveat Emptor (was: Excellent quote from Len Bullard)
    • From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com>