Re: DSSSL style editing (was: RE: Positioning...)

> I will not attempt to prove, but will for the moment merely assert,
> that ten years from now the total number of pages on the Web posted by
> commercial content providers will be much larger than the number of
> pages posted by individuals.  Whether I'm right about that or not,
> that's the problem space in which I'm working.  The kinds of
> publishing problems that I alluded to earlier arise from this area.
> CSS cannot effectively address these problems; DSSSL can.  That's why
> I'm interested in it.

I'll agree with what Jon is saying to a certain extent. However,
I'm inclined to think that I might have a different version of
what "commercial" means. I won't deny that ten years ago when
DTP arrived on the scene, there were a lot of ransom notes created.
People eventually knuckled down and did some good design work.
However, DTP as evidenced by the Society for Technical Communications
is still something done primarily as outsourced or contracted work
by those below the Fortune 1000 class. With the rise of employment
in small businesses and business successes in general, ten years
from now the Fortune 1000 will probably only comprise 1/3 of the
commercial web work.

For that reason, I think that we would need to look at how these
commercial workers will determine what to use 10 years from now.  If
they get good principle based education we can expect them to be open
to this mindset. However, if education continues as it is today, with
virtually all education being rote procedure based training on how to
accomplish a particular goal such as making lists - not how to
strategize a documentation design, implementation and publishing
process, DSSSL will be much like DocBook.

One of the things that I am constantly reminded of when I teach HTML,
(and now CSS) courses, it the absolute lack of architecture, design
strategy, and even general document principles taught to the average
writer or DTP person these days.

Mary E. S. Morris

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 1997 15:03:31 UTC