Re: xywrite and xml

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Patricia M Godfrey  Sun, 1
Jun 2003 12:02:28 -0400

> Why are there MDNMs in a file at all? In XyW4, additive modes
> are the default;

Actually, the opposite is true: the default MoDe behavior is non-
additive. For example, if you DeFine some NorMal text and issue
func M9 or command MD IT, you'll get ≪MDIT≫text≪MDNM≫. Only the
specific command MD +IT produces ≪MD+IT≫text≪MD-IT≫. So, unless
the user has gone to lengths to work around this default behavior
(by customizing the KBD file, etc.), even a Xy4 or XyWin file is
likely to have ≪MDNM≫'s. A generic Xy <==> markup "conversion"
routine with any hope of working out of the box will have to come to
grips with that. (Not that anything more than a very circumscribed
"conversion" is possible -- there's a fundamental mismatch between
markup language and a page layout system such as Xy's, all the more
so when you get into the more aggressively "meta" flavors like XHTML
and XML -- but that's another issue.)

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/