From: Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Date: Sun Dec 26 1999 - 11:13:08 MST
Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> wrote on Sunday, December 26,
1999 10:13 am,
> Given my down in the trenches approach to HTML and document conversions,
> I do agree with Eugene's comments that the separation of the "data" from
> the "presentation" would be nice. The classic "column" format of
newspapers
> and some journals is an example of a media presentation specific
requirement.
> I've got hundreds of dual-column journal documents that end up in single
> column in HTML. (This makes complete sense since one cannot easily
> reformat "image" pages from journals that are designed from letter or A4
> format in the alternate format.) However, to the degree that multi-column
> format enhances readability it would be nice to be able to label text
> with that presentation option.
>
> Given the forthcoming eMedia like eBooks means that documents may
> need a variety of presentation styles. Say I want to look at a
> corporate report with one eBook reading the text in portrait mode
> with another eBook reading the tables in landscape mode. How do you
> get to the point where you can have a document format that specifies
> that the (text) portrait pages go to Book (P) while the (table) landscape
> pages go to Book (L)? Ideally you would want the document to specify
> this type of information and the server to direct the output pages
> appropriately.
>
> Hey, this must be a new idea, can't I patent this????
As I pointed out in another post, this already exists. It is called
style-sheets. It sounds exactly like what you want. You can read a
newspaper page with the "small-type/columns" style sheet, while reading a
humor page with "comic-book font and large drop caps" style sheet. It would
be trivial to switch them without altering the source content pages. Users
can override the author's style sheet with one of their own, such as
"large-print" style sheet, or "voice synthesizer for the blind" style sheet.
This already exists, and is already supported by Netscape 3.0 and above, and
Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. Better web pages on the net (of which
there are few!) already use this. The "strict" definition of HTML 4.0 says
that <font> tags, <color> tags, and the like are illegal. Such presentation
markup should be done separately from the source content page.
For more information, see <http://www.w3.org/Style/> for more information.
The W3C organization that defines the standard for Web communications,
including HTML and Style Sheets, has been pushing this standards since 1994.
Any web designer who doesn't know about them is simply nonstandard and
out-of-touch.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://harveynewstrom.com> Certified Consultant, Legal Hacker, Engineer, Research Scientist, Author.
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