Re: Separation of presentation and structure

Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Sun, 6 Aug 95 16:23:10 EDT

>Presentation control is entirely compatible with "the 'SGML Way'" - that's
>they whole point of style sheets. <record broken="yes">The fact that not
>very many people know about that has everything to do with the lack of
>compelling applications that make use of that separation. It's the old
>"show, don't tell" philosophy of course, but with a twist. Unfortunately it
>looks like the people who would be building these compelling applications are
>interested in following rather than leading.</record>

Have a tour around EBT's home page then, or around the VODAK site.

I think the real truth is that not many people understand what it
means to seperate structure from presentation, and certainly don't
understand how it can be applied. Many businesses find the technology
very compelling indeed, but these businesses are often involved in
*large scale* publishing, which is certainly not the current focus of
the WWW. As the focus changes, and it *will* change, I think you'll
find more people looking to keep their data in SGML, and use
technology like DynaWeb to make it available on the WWW. In terms of
management, and maintenance costs, it makes the best sense...

HTML is kind of like C++: the language is very popular, and a *lot* of
bad C++ code is written by people who haven't the foggiest what it
means to sit down and perform an analysis of their objects. The
up-front cost of entry is quite low, but eventually, you start running
into brick walls... and then you pay the price.