Re: Transition (was Re: Capitalize across "span")

Todd Fahrner wrote:

> John Udall wrote (3:55 PM -0500 2/9/98):
>
> "  >Why bother trying to preserve structure and
> " >semantics in a display format? All you need is DIVs, SPANs, tables, and
> " >forms. And support for "atomist" CSS - nothing too relative or
> " >inheritance-intensive, and preferably inline. And DHTML. Right? If you
> "
> "       Wrong.  Or at least, not completely right.
>
> I think it's even more completely wrong than you do. From your reply and
> others, though, I see that my rhetoric was too elliptical. I think
> preserving structure and semantics all the way up to the stylesheet
> interpreter is critical

What he said, to the power n.

I am starting to see generated HTML from server-side stylesheets, where all
structure and semantics has been tossed away and the entire thing consists of
<font> and <br>; the result is pretty nauseating. More so when you realise that the
source document, hidden away behind the server, was XML bristling with semantic
richness.

>  If documents are to achieve true
> portability across a continuously variable and infinitely extensible range
> of output media (which I take to be the Web ideal), then stylesheets must
> be very highly parametric. They must marry the demands of document
> structure/semantics with the limitations of the rendering environment
> (aspect, color and physical resolution, properties of available fonts,
> frequency response, etc.). I'm excited by XSL as a potential container for
> such parametrization [sp?], but frightened to see that the first
> implementations are geared more toward feeding legacy renderers "empty
> caloric" instructions, rather than upping the ante for rendering behavior
> per se.
>
> Sorry if that's a muddle. I wish I had more time to develop it.

Au contraire, I am in violent agreement with what you said.

> Funny, I thought "transitional" meant "transitional to HTML 4.0 Strict".
> Not to XML in the general case.

--Chris
"Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it"
Sex Pistols, 1976 [1]

[1] for the humour impaired but lyrically aware: that's irony, not advocacy

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 1998 04:31:48 UTC