RE: Seperate content from presentation (was storing info in XSL -FO: new issue?)

It isn't wrong, it simply isn't demanded by XML.  
I keep seeing this "XML forces one to separate 
content from presentation" and in fact, it does 
no such thing.  XML Doesn't Care.   One does 
that because wants a stronger and more easily 
interpreted classification for the content, a 
label, if you please, that invokes or evokes 
more domain-specific interpretation.  Rendering 
is just the last interpretation if indeed the 
content is to be rendered.

A community of understanding will interpret (in the 
semiotic sense of interpretant) the same labels 
the same way.   "Style for local application" is 
also overloaded because style means one thing 
to one community and something else to another. 
Plain English to you is suggestive and misleading 
elsewhere.   That is why we document agreements, 
conserve nouns, play lawyer language games, etc.

We can both agree that <h1> means a header-one to 
you and me and probably a lot of others.  We can 
never convince a computer of that.  We can get a 
computer to either/both recognize that generic id 
and set it to ARIAL BOLD SIZE 22 and we can also 
get it to tell us it found a header-one and maybe 
do something else useful.  Both interpretations are 
perfectly legitimate.

But content tagging usually means to call the 
information what some group calls it regardless 
of the document structure it is in.  So 

<partno>

can also be given ARIAL BOLD SIZE 22 but to 
consider it a "header one" wouldn't be reasonable, 
but only to a particular community of understanding. 
It is as said on XML-Dev, you can't really get away 
from having an external document somewhere to express 
that agreement.   

So not wrong, just weak.  Without some explicit understanding 
of what it means to say <h1> vs <partno>, it is all just 
presentation.  Humans aren't "local applications". 

len

-----Original Message-----
From: DPawson@rnib.org.uk [mailto:DPawson@rnib.org.uk]

Do you believe that this seperate content from presentation
position to be invalid, or just wrongly worded?
I don't recall it being challenged as a principle in the ac meeting.
I'd be interested in any variant on this you could offer please.

'Name it for maximum amount of unambiguous use' sounds
kinda like semantic markup to me.

I like the 'bind late for a given community use' though.
My plain English would be 'style for local application',
presuming a human end user.

Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2002 10:06:01 UTC