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Subject:XML and professional page design From:"Susan Ahrenhold" <sahrenhold -at- winspc -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 8 Nov 2000 15:52:59 -0500
Note that "if and when" the XML revolution comes, it will be because of the
drawbacks in HTML, not in XML. XML is a structural content language, and is
used with XSL style sheets to produce formatted content.
The great advantage of this is that you can re-use structured information in
vastly different layouts. The content isn't the writer's problem. XSL
stylesheets can be remarkably sophisticated, as can the DTD's they are
designed to service.
It's only been in the last few years that writers were in the business of
specifying how their words appeared on the page. The milestone for me was
switching for WP 5.1 to Word, and then going to an all-SGML environment.
I suspect that working in Word can make us sloppy -- we substitute layout
for thinking about the structure of the work we're producing. This is
actually why I prefer to write straight text, and then format later. After
all, hitting the left indent key doesn't necessarily mean that the thought
I'm putting on the next line is subordinate to the thought in the paragraph
above; that's my job.
>>
>>The main drawback that I find with XML is that professional page
>>design is very difficult. XML is oriented towards structural
>>content, and style sheets simply aren't very sophisticated.
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