Re: Header nesting style question

Mary Morris (marym@Finesse.COM)
Mon, 11 Jul 1994 22:25:20 +0200

> design, one is not consequent on another.
>
> Yes, you are correct. Certainly there can be inter and intra document
> references. Hmm... another style question: Do people prefer one giant
> document with internal references, or many small documents with external
> references?
>
This really depends on who the audience is, what type of client-side
stuff they have... For example, if you are only publishing internal to
your company, have a good network, and the users have browsers that
can efficiently manage one large chapter file, you should do it.

However, if your audience has a slow network or a less than robust
browser, break it into smaller chunks. People aren't going to
read something if it is time consuming and annoying to get the
data in the first place.


> There are a lot of different ways of doing it. I was kind of wondering what
> a nice consistent reader-friendly way of doing it is... How do you
> structure your document headers? LaTeX to HTML preserves the relative
> section sizes between chapters and sections. I've seen lot's of other
> documents that don't, i.e. all documents start at <h1> regardless of whether
> they are nested within a larger construct.
>

> What does manually mean? Do you mean that I am going to think of it using
> my head? Then yes. Type it by hand? Then yes. Make corrections by hand?
> Then yes. Have my readers review it with their eyes? Then yes. (I do use
> ispell though... ;-)
>
I think that people are asking if the document already exists in
a standard DTP format, and if you mean to use a filter to convert
from the DTP format to HTML.

> Maybe we should split this discussion into: (a) how do you use header
> nesting?

As for me, I am looking at 30 page chapters with 3 levels of
headings in the chapters for my work. I work in Frame and most of my formatting
is directly convertable to HTML directives. I will probably break
things up at the section headings instead of the chapter level.
I really think that 30 pages is too much for one document, but
5-8 pages is ok.

I will also offer a Table of Contents for all levels of headings
so that people can go to what they want, and I will use wais as
an index.

> and (b) do you think HTML is expressive enough to write in?
>

I really think that once the <smirk>, <flame> and <smile> tags are
implemented we should have a good basis for expressive written languague.
Until then, it will only be the printed word.
> - Ken
>
Mary Morris