Re: RS/RE: basic questions

On Sun, 22 Sep 96 15:29:03 CDT, Robert Streich <streich@slb.com> wrote:

>The only place it becomes an issue is when you have markup in data content
>that is not a proper subelement and it's the only thing on the line. Worst
>case: if line breaks are significant (to the presentation), you get an
>empty new line; if line breaks are not significant, you get an extra space.
>
>These things are easily picked up during proofing. Good spellcheckers even
>pick up the two or more spaces for you. If I'm in line-break-significant
>content, I'm also very unlikely to put in any extraneous markup anyway.
>If I need to, I can easily remember to "hide" the line break in the added
>markup using either Lee's or Michael's suggestions.
As you just demonstrated, you are forcing the author to both remember the rules
and implement them himself. They are not simple rules; if they were, we wouldn't
be having this discussion.

>
>But I think the rules are much simpler to remember and a lot easier to
>digest than having to sometimes "quote" data content. This requires that
>the author know what mixed content is and which elements are mixed. This
>is a lot more to bite off than the alternative.
That isn't my proposal, Bob. My proposal is that data always be "quoted", just
as in programs.  The author does *not* have to know about mixed content (in
fact, mixed content won't actually exist). White space within quotes is data;
other white space is ignored. 
--
Charles F. Goldfarb * Information Management Consulting * +1(408)867-5553
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Received on Sunday, 22 September 1996 18:37:01 UTC