Re: as"Separation of Content from Presentation"

Kynn Bartlett writes:
> Okay, so you are saying that presentation (e.g. CSS) should be used
> to define the meaning of content, rather than being encoded in the
> markup?
> 
> Or in both?
> 
> This goes counter to my understanding of how CSS and XML (and other
> Web languages) are meant to function.  Can you please explain more
> about this theory of yours, and describe how it benefits those with
> special needs?  At first pass, it sounds like you are arguing that
> <font> tags instead of <h1> tags in HTML were the way to go, roughly
> speaking.

I read Elliotte as saying that one kind of presentation (CSS font
information) may used as a guide to creating another kind of
presentation.

I don't think there's anything at all remarkable in that claim, though
it seems to have set off a new round of asbestos-demanding conversation.
Separating content from presentation is certainly difficult, as Walter
Perry discussed in his presentation at Extreme Markup Languages last
week, and I think trying to hammer out the one true separation is
pointless.

I have to say that I'm deeply deeply disappointed by the "generic XML
considered harmful" bogosity that seems endemic on this list.  I can't
say I got any such feeling from documents focused on the subject,
notably:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlgl

(2.3 needs fixing, but that's okay.)  It seems like any XML document
whose creators read and applied that document should feel comfortable
publishing to the Web, whether or not the semantics of that document
format is broadly understood by software.


-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2002 13:32:46 UTC