TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Various HTML issues From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Wed, 7 Feb 1996 12:06:00 +0100
Hello David,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von David Blyth an All am 03.02.96
DB> From: David Blyth <dblyth -at- qualcomm -dot- com>
DB> >You can force *vertical* space, but not *horizontal* space.
DB> Just one
DB> >example of poor language design.
DB> I agree that HTML is poorly designed
please do not confuse two things: DTP and SGML-like tagging. Personally, I
dislike the efforts to give HTML DTP-like possibilities. This way it looses
much of its original appeal as the poor man's SGML.
Originally, HTML was mostly about tagging the contents of a document. Look at
the HTML 1.1 tags and you see what I mean. If you wish to control exactly how
your document is displayed, you should insert PDF (Acrobat) files or
somethingg like this.
There are two outposts of electronic document creation:
- Systems like those based on SGML, which try hard to offer possibilities
to re-use the contents. They need a common, standardized technoloy
like SGML *to tag the contents* of the document. On the other side
this means no emphasis on DTP-like functions.
- Systems like Adobe Acrobat, which offer you many possibilities to
express yourself on the screen or on a print-out, but who more or
less *make it impossible to do anything else* with these documents.
There is a cooperation between Adobe and Netscape to bridge this gap. I could
imagine to build a framework using HTML documents which include PDF documents.
This way you could get the best of both worlds: A logical structure of the
whole document to navigate and fully designed chapters or so, that cannot be
tampered with.
BTW: Adobe an Netscape work on a PDF variant where you can download single
pages. Presently, you must have the complete PDF file before you can start to
display parts of it.
Greetings from Germany,
Alexander
--
|Fidonet: Alexander Von_obert 2:2490/1719
|Internet: avobert -at- twh -dot- msn -dot- sub -dot- org
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.
