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> to be limited to one specific function. If writers don't have to concern
> themselves with document design or layout, then their jobs become reduced
> almost to a clerical function. He said that would be the day when he
Gerry asks a good question. This was debated in some detail in the first
MIT Press collection--Text, Context, and Hypertext--in a pair of articles
by John Brockmann and Geoffrey James (1988). Brockmann uses an earlier
article of mine (Seeing the Text, College Composition and Communication,
Oct. 1986) to argue that the process of designing a text--laying it out,
making formatting decisions, figuring the best way to display it--is part
of the writing process and feeds back into the thinking of the writer. It
is not like we write a text and then decide how to lay it out. Laying it
out is part of the writing itself. This is the same position argued by
Nord and Tanner in their piece in the Barnum and Carliner collection
_Techniques for Technical Communicators_. (Macmillan 1993).
With SGML and HTML and all declarative formating languages, some of the
design intelligence--the feedback gained by seeing how a text is
partitioned and desplayed, is taken away from the writer. I always
thought that the best tools are like Word, that both allows declarative
formatting through its style sheets, and shows the writer simulataneously
what the text looks like because of its wysiwyg display. I remember how
excited the writers at IBM were when bookmaster finally allowed them to
see their formatted text on screen as opposed to imagining what it would
look like when printed. I have never understood why the tools don't give
the writer the ability to both tag lines and see the effects. I remember
strugglingto build tables with Script, and now I am watching my students
build Mosaic files that don't get displayed until they are actually
compiled by Mosaic. I admit it is a convenience to be able to work with
HTML formatting in any editor. I have less experience with SGML. Perhaps
there are tools that allow one to tag and see the results?
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> Stephen A. Bernhardt >
> Department of English, Box 3E >
> New Mexico State University >
> Las Cruces, NM 88003 >
> 505-646-2027 FAX 505-646-7725 >
> e-mail sbernhar -at- nmsu -dot- edu >
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