Re: storing info in XSL-FO: new issue? [was: Draft TAG Finding:...]

On 8/16/02 9:20 AM, "Tim Bray" <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:

> This one is a tempest in a teapot.  In the spectrum of data formats, FOs
> sit beside PDF.  There are advantages and disadvantages to trade off
> between the two, none of which have the remotest architectural input.
> 
> I would however, support an assertion in the architecture document that
> important information SHOULD be stored and (optionally) delivered with
> markup that is as semantically rich as achievable,

I don't think that is strong enough of a statement.  In particular, the
"optionally" part, presuming you are using the word "delivered" in the
context of the Web.

In would be better to simply state:

"information SHOULD be stored _and_ delivered with
 markup that is as semantically rich as achievable."

And provide a scale of the relative semantic richness of various formats,
something like:

    Semantic richness of various content formats
               (diagram not to scale)

 MOST.......................................LEAST
      MathML  (X)HTML  SVG  XSLFO  XML  PNG

Though others have provided much more detail and description on this topic.
See various WAI documents and independent papers [1].


> and that separation
> of semantic and presentational markup,
> to the extent possible, is
> architecturally sound.
> 
> -Tim


Your use of the term "presentational markup" is very good example of why
this discussion is far more than a "tempest in a teapot".

That term has many (ill-conceived?) assumptions built into it.

Many consider a more proper separation to be:

 "separation of markup and presentation"

E.g. in WAI-WEBCONTENT[2], "Themes of Accessible Design":
 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#themes

 "Separate structure from presentation"

Of course that is a very general statement.  Guideline 3 from the same
document spells it out even better:
 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-structure-presentation

"Mark up documents with the proper structural elements. Control presentation
with style sheets rather than with presentation elements and attributes."


One conclusion that can be drawn from Guideline 3 is:

 "XML elements and attributes SHOULD NOT be used for presentation."

I believe this to be a sound architectural principle, and one that I
_thought_ W3C had adopted as a whole many many years ago when such elements
and attributes were deprecated from HTML4.

Tantek

[1]
 http://people.opera.com/howcome/1999/foch.html

[2]
 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT

Received on Monday, 19 August 2002 14:31:12 UTC