Re: textured backgrounds

Paul Grosso (pbg@texcel.no)
Fri, 20 Jan 95 06:50:34 EST

> > From Stu as quoted by Murray who was quoted by others:
> >
> > I think we are in dangerous ideological territory, and I feel a bit
> > schizophrenic about the issue myself. Murray is correct in saying that
> > publishers want to impose their own look-and-feel on their documents,
> > and their is value in this for both reader and publisher. It is useful
> > both to me and to Freeman Publishers that I can identify a page of
> > Scientific American from across the room.
> >
> > Is there a sensible middle ground that allows, but does not promote,
> > such specification? Then the market place will be able to sort this
> > out of its own accord.
>
> Stu (and others)
>
> What I have been saying all along is:
>
> . . .
>
> In other words, allow me (author) to do reasonable things
> with my data, and allow me (reader) to ignore much/all
> of what the author specified.
>
> I kinda thought that that was middle ground. But we seem to keep
> coming back to these questions.
>
> Murray

It's basically been said already by others, but I think the answer
for all style is to (1) take it out of the document and put it into
something else, e.g., a style sheet and (2) allow multiple style
sheets--e.g., from the author, perhaps from the reader, perhaps
from the reader's organization or department, perhaps from the
journal/editor/organization for whom/which the author writes--and
(3) allow the reader to determine the priority of the style sheets.

Most readers will just use the author's style; but some organizations
will want to have a "house" style as either a fallback where the author
didn't specify something and/or as an override in some cases to the
authors style; and some readers will want to supply some style that
either forms defaults for things the other style sheets don't specify
and/or to override all other styles. For example, I want to take most
of what the author suggests, but my department has a set of default
styles for things in cases the author hasn't specified things plus I
always want to override the fonts to be bigger because I can't read
smaller text. I'll have a personal "reader" style sheet (that maybe
only changes font sizes) that takes first priority, then I'll want to
use the author's style sheet to affect style as s/he indicated (except
for font sizes), then I'll supply my department's style sheet as a last
line for things still not specified. I believe that the easiest/best
way to get this kind of multilevel, reader-specifiable ordering of
priorities of style is to have multiple style sheets that are separate
from the document.