[6385] in www-talk@info.cern.ch

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Re: Structured text v. page descriptions (was Netscape, HTML, and Designers)

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hollander)
Thu Oct 27 20:44:36 1994

Date: Thu, 27 Oct 1994 18:27:22 +0100
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: dmh@hpfcma.fc.hp.com
From: Dave Hollander <dmh@hpfcma.fc.hp.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>

> At 9:38 AM 10/22/94, Gavin Nicol wrote:
> 
> >While I agree with the overall content of Nick's message, I don't like
> >the way this implies you *can't* get good visual display with
> >structured documents.
> 
> That's not implied at all.  It's not a question of whether or not it looks
> good, it's a question of whether or not the document's creator has control
> over the appearance.

Should not the question be to what degree the creator has control? The
presentation fidelity issue is not black and white, there are shades of
gray. I believe that in the long run the winning approach will provide
the author enough control for a look and feel while allowing the reader
enough control to adopt the document to their tastes and environment.

Would this debate be more constructive if we discussed what control variables
there are and what level of control each party needs to have? Here is a
short list to start with:

 * Wide variety of fonts

 * Special characters

 * Lists and tables

 * Graphics
   - Flowing text around graphics
   - Captions on graphics

Dave Hollander


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Dave Hollander 			Hewlett-Packard
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