Comments on latest draft of authoring tool guidelines

What follows is a series of comments on the authoring tool guidelines
which I originally wrote as an informal e-mail message to Charles, in
response to his request that I review the document. The informality is
reflected in the lack of polish that will be evident in the writing style.
I have chosen not to edit the substance of the comments before forwarding
them, however, as I am somewhat busy at the moment, and, in any case, the
remarks themselves should be reasonably clear, even if poorly written.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:45:12 +1000 (AEST)
From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>
To: charles@w3.org
Subject: Comments on latest draft of authoring tool guidelines

Charles,

As promised, I have reviewed the latest draft of your excellent authoring
tool guidelines. Unfortunately, my comments will be somewhat
disappointing, as they do not offer easy and straightforward solutions to
the problems raised.

The authoring tool guidelines are very good as they stand. Congratulations
are owed to you and the other editors, together, of course, with the
members of the working group, for compiling an excellent document which
strives to address both the user interface of the authoring tool as well
as the output which it generates.

The central issue that I would like to draw to your attention, which is
partially addressed by the guidelines but which may require further
thought, may best be described as the nature and consequences of so-called
"wysiwyg" editing. As the acronym implies, it refers to a type of editing
practice in which the content is envisaged by the author largely, if not
exclusively, in terms of appearance, and the actual markup codes are
inserted behind the scenes. This can not be simply addressed by offering
an alternative, structural or markup-oriented view of the document as an
option, for the wysiwyg environment and the concepts surrounding it can
fundamentally determine the nature of the author's interaction with the
document, especially for inexperienced developers and those who are not
sufficiently familiar with HTML and its roots in SGML concepts. Thus, even
though it might be mentioned in documentation that, for example, the
"indent" command inserts a BLOCKQUOTE element, or that it ought to be used
to designate quotations, so far as the author is concerned, it serves to
indent text in his/her editing environment, and has a similar effect in
her/his favourite user agent. The tendency will thus be to think of it as
the "indent command" rather than as the "BLOCKQUOTE element", and to reach
for it whenever indentation is desired in any context, with consequently
detrimental effects on the quality of the HTML output. Similar comments
can be made regarding text positioning commands which generate (invisibly
so far as the author is concerned) tables which are used for layout
purposes, or a command which produces centred and boldface text (perhaps
in HTML an H1 element) which the author feels inclined to use whenever a
centred and boldface item appears to be appropriate. More generally, the
problem is that the further one moves away from direct editing of the
markup and toward a wysiwyg approach, the less aware the author will be of
the underlying code and the concepts behind it, and, correspondingly, the
distinction between structure and presentation will become invisible.

What the author sees may well correspond to what he or she "gets" in
her/his preferred user agent, but this will generally be quite different
from what the user of a different output medium is likely to experience.
Thus, the distinction between content and presentation has to become a
genuine component of the author's every-day editing experience. The tool
has to distinguish changes that affect content, from changes that alter
style properties. The concept of wysiwyg must, it seems to me, be
partially compromised. Perhaps a requirement that the name of the element
which is currently under the editing cursor always be visible in the
default view presented by the authoring tool, would help. The authoring
tool should also offer distinctive commands and functions for editing
style properties (implemented via a style language), which are clearly
separated from those which change or insert markup/content. Also, the ways
in which commands and operations are described in documentation will tend
to influence the approach taken by the author. Thus, a description in
entirely visual terms may tend to yield an editing process that is
conceived visually as well--that is to say, in terms of appearance rather
than structure.

I am sure that you are aware of, and can develop, better solutions to this
problem.

The ability to edit auditory style sheets etc., is another important
component of a comprehensive authoring tool. I assume that it is covered
in your discussion of W3C technologies but thought that I should mention
it.

Also, the treatment of tables in the authoring tool guidelines will
clearly be dependent on the final text of the table-related checkpoints in
the web content accessibility guidelines. However, it may be arguable that
the elimination of deprecated language features and bad habits (such as
the use of tables for layout) is even more important in the authoring tool
arena than it is for content developers generally. In the case of content
authoring, the WCAG can recommend interim solutions, in the knowledge that
web sites will be updated as technology evolves. However, an installed
authoring tool may persist for much longer, without being upgraded, than a
web page, and this may demand review of the importance of avoiding
deprecated and inappropriate uses of markup. Of course, the argument will
be that the authoring tool developers have to remain consistent with that
which user agents have implemented, but user agent developers can likewise
offer the same excuse for inaction.

I would be very interested in your response to the above comments, and
would be pleased to discuss some of the issues further, if desired.

Received on Tuesday, 20 April 1999 18:50:48 UTC