Re: WWWWW Notes

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Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1993 17:06:53 +1200
From: Nathan Torkington <Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz>
Message-id: <199308140506.AA02237@kauri.vuw.ac.nz>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Cc: Steve.Heaney@delft.sgp.slb.com
Subject: Re: WWWWW Notes
In-reply-to: Steve Heaney's message <199308131110.AA13788@mordred.delft.sgp.slb.com>
References: <199308131110.AA13788@mordred.delft.sgp.slb.com>
Status: RO

Steve Heaney writes:

> However, I think (picking up on Nat's comments in http://www.vuw.ac.nz/\
> non-local/gnat/converters.html) that the HTML+ DTD should stand on its own 
> feet as a usable DTD with "broad appeal".  A common DTD encoding semantic 
> information is obviously important for document exchange and reuse, and so 
> we should strive to achieve this however difficult the task may seem.

Aaah, now this is a good point and the first time I've heard it
explicitly raised.  If HTML+ is to be a DTD that encodes semantic
information for document interchange, then it should be exposed to
criticism and comments from a large group of people --- namely those
who are producing SGML documents at the moment.  If we do less than
this, we run the risk of producing something sub-optimal.

> A DTD describing an "abstract presentation information" (which
> Nathan suggests) is no more or less than _another_ presentation
> format.  Surely we can aim higher that that.

Surely we can, but do we really want to?  The power of SGML isn't, as
is often touted, the ``removing of presentation from the markup'', but
really the separation of presentation and semantics.  Obviously this
requires a presentation-free DTD, but doesn't preclude encoding the
presentation (what SGMLers call the ``style-sheet'') in another DTD.

What I envision is people writing their documents in whatever DTD they
feel best suits their semantics.  Then they convert their SGML to
HTPL, a common presentation format for the web, and this is what is
put on the web.  If we create a DTD that encodes portable semantics,
then by golly, they can convert their SGML to PSL (portable semantics
language) and make *that* available as well, but there's no good
reason to mix the two --- they serve different purposes.  The
presentation version is for human reading, the portable version for
everything else.

Nat