RE: Clear and simple writing

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:

  Hi Chas,

  CSS can do it but only if there is a standard way to mark the
  supplemental graphics. Right?

wrong. We can supply templates that can be used by authors, who are free to
name classes any way they choose (important to make sure that they can fit in
with whatever else they are doing). We can also supply metadata templates so
that the authors can relate the names they used to properties defined in the
semantic web, which enables us to make tools that can recognise information
in individual pages.

The difference here might seem subtle, because it is. The idea is that we
are not trying to re-specify bits of CSS or HTML, but instead to preserve the
flexibility of both, and use a more appropriate technology to do the same
thing.

Incidentally for people writing XML languages this would allow them to
specify in their schemas that they have created a built-in construct that
does this, and it would be possible to identify the parts of that using the
same kinds of semantic-web information and tools.

I realise this seems like a bit of a hand-waving answer, because I haven't
provided a lot of detail, but I will try to sketch out the techniques as soon
as possible. I would like to do this on the xtech mailing list, since it also
concerns the other technical groups directly.

GV
   When we looked at this before I thought the response was
  a) there isn't one
  b) we aren't supposed to designate any classes in advance like this.

  Are these still the answers?

CMN In terms of "should we try to prescribe a standard CSS class (well,
actually it would be HTML too) for carrying some piece of information"
these are still the answers. (Isn't it nice to have a bit of stability
<grin/>?)

cheers

Charles

Received on Sunday, 2 December 2001 02:14:06 UTC