Re: Several questions to sgml-tools
On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> The worst thing is, a DTD is not hard to write, but will gain you nothing
> for your needs. You are mainly interested inthe output, but a DTD will not
> output anything. For the output, you'll need a DSSSL style specification,
> which is written according to yet another standard, in a scheme like
> language. It is all very interesting, but doesn't serve your needs quickly.
... and that's my problem, thought.
> HTML will not display any math correctly, use TeX for that ;) If you want
> to display ascii, use a tag that represents such. "pre" will do, maybe in
> conjunction with "blockquote" (if it exists) or something similar.
Immediately there is the next question: How do I insert these Tags using
sgml-tools or (seems me better) yodl?
> > But HTML contains certain Tags for changing the font size and for instance
> > you can include images too.
> > Thats well defined in the HTML standard.
>
> Wrong. HTML 4.0 strict does not use such tags. HTML 4.0 transition defines
> such tags but only for backward compliance and as an interim solution. HTML
> 4.0 transition should not be used any longer. You should use Cascade Style
> Sheets for presentation. Never depend on presentation.
That are interesting news for me and it seems to be reasonable.
I like the idea of logical markup and would like to usie it this way.
Is there any way to include private CSS styles using yodl?
> > For poor browsers like lynx exist default methods like showing the
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Shame on you.
I'm very sorry to shame my favourite web browser. In fact I use
netscape only if I expect to view some graphic things.
> Do not think that lynx can't make use of gif or jpg files. I can view them
> using mime capabilities and zgv. The fact that you consider lynx as "poor"
> shows that you didn't grab the concept yet. Unfortunately, you are not
> alone: The web is probably the biggest misunderstanding in the 20th century.
If I wrote poor so I hoped everyone would read this as an abbreviation for
"this simple and fast web browser which is sane to run on each poor terminal
and is ignored by so many people because they think lynx is poor" :).
> To get the desired result, use things like:
>
> <EM STYLE="warning">
> Alpha Software
> </EM>
>
> and cascade stylesheet:
> EM.STYLE { background-color: red, foreground-color: black, font-size: bigger}
That seems to be very interesting.
By the way is there any good documentation for style sheets.
I mean really good documentation. In my poor (here stands poor indead for
what it is :) ) opinion it had something to do with frames and this kind
of stuff which I wanted to avoid. Can anybody explain if there could
be a way to create frames from a logical markup? I think my lack of
having a reasonable answer prevents me from using frames.
> No, a DTD wouldn't help you, as browsers are closed-minded and not aware of
> it. Use cascade style sheets. Install the doc-html-w3 package (or sim.)
That's a further interesting hint. At this place thanks for all Debian
maintainers to create such a complete distribution.
> Look at www.w3.org. There's lots of stuff. Have fun.
:). You are right. My problem is that the WWW is an overkill of information.
I prefer the way to install reasonable packages (like doc-html-w3) to
which point me friendly and helpful people like you. Did you ever
used such a terrible search machine in the Web and found the information
straightforeward? Two or three years ago it was possible, but this
is another cup of tee and leads to off-topic here.
> What is the right markup? Will you consider any situation? What if you use
> red colors and green colors, but I'm red-green-blind? Or I use a monochrom
> monitor? Or I'm visually impaired? or in text mode over a slow console?
As a LaTeX user I know that colors aren't necessary for markup.
> What if I'm not reading the text, but listening to it? What if I want to use
> your source and transform it to another format/style/document?
>
> A lot of people have made a big effort to find solutions for this problems.
> You have to made the effort and learn the concepts. First, don't think of
> the presentation, think of the underlying structures of your document. Then
> the computer can make sense of what you write, and a text to speech
> synthesizer, too.
OK, we don't want to disappoint somebody. But if I want to descibe the
usage of an image viewer I think I shouldn't spend much time to think
about how can blind people obtain the documentation.
There is some kind of information which has to be presented graphically.
The concept is good, but I would like those documentations consider to
be good which gives the people addressed by the thing which is documented
can obtain the necessary information in a straightforeward way.
The documentation has to be well structurized and organized -- as a rule
this is a consequence of logical markup and that's why I like it.
> The whole process is quite complex. The standards involved are ISO standards
> and several hundred pages long. You don't need to know all to work with it,
> but you should know about the fundamental concepts. There are some tutorials
> for it, if you're interested, I can provide you with basic stuff.
This seems to be very interesting for me and possibly for others.
May be you think about bundling it in a Debian package. If I finished
my theses a would probably have time to deal with such stuff, but for
now I see no chance for further investigations in this topic.
Kind regards and thanks for the detailed answer
Andreas.
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