Re: XML/SGML

["Russ W. Urquhart" urqurw@xxxxxxxx]

On Thu, Jul 29, 1999 at 03:01:15PM -0400, TBaehr@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> I can't be
sure, but what I think Eric may be missing is that not everybody loads the
menus, and therefore have modified to keyboard file to avoid them. Unfortunately
(depending on one's perspective), there are a lot of goodies in the menu files
that maybe should have been in the Editor. Keeping them out of the Editor helps
its raw speed, I suppose, but the menus have an overhead of their own (which on
a fast machine may be inelegant but not particularly noticeable).
>
> For those folks who despise menus and dialog boxes, some of the stuff in the
original menu files that they find useful could be copied into a customized
command file (with suitable modifications to the routine and to the keyboard).
>
> The decision to include something in the Editor was sometimes a philosophical
one, and occasionally the user interface people would clash with Dave Erickson
over it: One of us would ask Dave about adding a feature to the menus, and he
would say, "If it was all that good a feature, I would have put it into the
Editor," or something similar. Dave was right in a very important way: The
Editor should do the basic stuff very well and very fast. The ancillary files
like menus, keyboard, and command files are for adding customizations and
flexibility. Putting too much functionality in the Editor would compromise
XyWrite's great flexibiity. I think in Dave's opinion, at least for part of the
time I was at Xyquest, we put far too much in the menus/dialogs.


That could be, but i think you guys did a great job a keeping Xywrite lean and
mean, BUT also allowing custimization, via those files, in such a way that is
intelligible and powerful. (Anyone ever try customizing their keyboard in Unix
or anyother M$ product for that matter?)


As far as the whole Stylesheet issue goes, i have only run into one problem,
and i'm going to run the risk of embarassing myself here by explaining it, but
I found that when i tried to us a style i had created, after using that style i
could no longer count on my default style controlling all the formatting
variables i had set before. It appeared that i would have to define a style for
use, as kind of a body or default style.

This, to me, ran counter to what i am used to when using a FrameMaker or
Interleaf, or Ventura for that matter. There is this notion of a paragraph
style that defines attributes for a paragraph so tagged. There is also the
notion of a character style, that defines attributes for characters so tagged.
When a portion of text that is part of a paragraph, having a certain paragraph
style, is tagged with a character style, that style's attributes supersedes the
paragraph's attributes, BUT ONLY FOR THE ATTRIBUTES DEFINED IN THAT CHARACTER
STYLE. Outside of that portion of text having the character style, the text
should look and format at the original paragraph style. Or at least this is
what i'd expect.

For whatever reason, when i tried to get Xywrite's styles to do this, i
couldn't get it to work that way. As i said earlier, this is more than likely
pilot error on my part, but if anyone could confirm yay or nay on this for me,
i'd appreciate it.

Also, the discussions recently on XML & SGML. While i haven't gotten into the
specifics of XML, I have more than a passing exposure to SGML & HTML. Having
fought some desires, some years ago, that there was a dire need for the
documents that my then company was creating, HAD to move to SGML, i became more
familiar with the design of SGML documents. As i recall, SGML documents, as
defined by their respective DTD's, by themselves had no notion of formatting,
but were more concerned about the structure of the document. Any
display/printing concerns were left to DISSYL (sp?) i believe. While i like the
notion of an ascii-based markup, i would think or i would want my wordprocessor
to be able to have some control over the actual layout portions of my document,
in a precise manner. That includes, but not limited to, font size, paper size,
leading, precise graphic placement, etc. The capabilities to do some of these
things in HTML is kind of kludgy IMO and suggests limited capabilites in HTML
to display these attributes. As i've said, i haven't yet gotten into XML, but,
i would want to be able to control these things in my wordprocessor/publishing
system. If later, i could then output this to XML, for someone else's benefit,
that would be fine.

FWIW,


Russ