RE: Layout Revision Proposal: CSS and then some

On Monday, November 24, 1997 1:58 AM, Jon Wallis 
[SMTP:cm1906@ccug.wlv.ac.uk] wrote:
> With respect, this is a very dangerous and naive assumption.  The
> very history of the web shows this.  Originally HTML was aimed at
> people who wanted to *structure* information (i.e., use it
> properly).  Then it got (ab)used by a far greater number of people
> who wanted layout/presentation control.  If/when SMIL gets
> released/taken up by Netscape/MS, it will be probably be used by far
> more people without a design background than with one - just as HTML
> is used by far more people with no knowledge of SGML or document
> structuring than with.

My understanding of the history of HTML is quite different:
	SGML was intended to structure information, and the particular 
implementation HTML (v1.0) flattened the data structure into a layout 
language, virtually destroying the possibility of recovering the 
information by any automatic means.  That is this the basic reason things 
like DSSSL and CSS were developed, to help separate the actual content from 
the data structure.

	And taken from this point of view, SMIL fails in the same way; SMIL's 
basic structure is essentially a description of the temporal rendering 
mechanism.  Maybe this should be a concern in itself.  Should there be 
another tag meant to block off content associations?

Andrew n marshall
  student - artist - programmer
    http://www.media-electronica.com/anm-bin/anm
      "Everyone a mentor,  Everyone a pupil"

Received on Monday, 24 November 1997 15:42:04 UTC