Re. SGML structure clarification

Subject: Re. SGML structure clarification
From: Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 08:31:01 LCL

Chet Ensign correctly corrects me by pointing out that SGML does
indeed determine the logical structure of a document (e.g., the
component "body text" follows the component "heading"). Mea culpa, but
that wasn't what I meant in my original posting re. moving text
directly from online to paper. (Hey, I'm just an editor... no one ever
said I could write clearly!)

What I was getting at, albeit unclearly, was the following:
1. Can you structure a document visually so that the same image works
equally well online and on paper? Thus, you'd only have to do the page
layout/design once. (SGML determines only structure, not appearance,
so it doesn't solve this part of the problem.)
2. Can you structure the flow of information so that the online
sequence works equally well on paper? Thus, you could "simply" [sic]
dump the online file to the printer and get a linear printout (on
paper) that works as well as the nonlinear online sequence. Although
SGML tells you how to order components (e.g., body text follows
heading), I'm not aware that it inherently defines that paragraph 73
comes logically after paragraph 27, but before paragraph 217 when you
print out the info. Now you could probably sequence your paragraphs in
this order directly in the SGML-tagged document, but does this solve
the problem?

Much more specifically yours,
--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.


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