RE: several messages

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch]
> >
> > In HTML, the agent knows what goes where (since it's a presentation
> > centric language)


Most of it's functionality was evolved from the visual rendering point
of view. <b>, <table> etc hold presentation meaning more than data
semantics. 


> (Strict) HTML is not a presentation-centric language.

Yes you can say that for XHTML Strict.


> > while the structure of an XML document doesn't help a browser in
> > deciding the presentation structure that will make sense to a user.
> 
> XML is a meta-language, it itself has no structure. XHTML is XML, for
> instance. So your argument makes no sense.


You are telling me that everything in an XML document is in a bag? By
structure, I mean hierarchies. Themata (as Schemata :-) is divided into
areas of the document without that order being the right one to display.
Am I making sense now?


> > So, either the XML document should have a structure and 'data order'
> > close to the desired XSL output, or an XSL is mandatory while CSS on
> > it's own is useless.
> 
> IMHO that argument makes no sense.

It's a pity you are saying that. I'll try again. Imagine a magazine as
an XML document. The user cannot handle XSL but the XSL is there to do
the following:

1)Sort <article> elements into specific categories
2)Make a TOC

Now, if you display that document with css only, you will get a series
of articles with no categorisation. Now you try and find the comics page
in that.


> > So, an agent should know what is what IMHO.
> 
> And that is what HTTP Content Negotiation is for.

If you could describe the above using HTTP Content Negotiation then you
wouldn't need XML to make a Solaris machine talk to a wintel one.

Manos

Received on Monday, 2 July 2001 04:10:24 UTC