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Re: Antwort: Re: DAVENPORT: Three more Questions.


> <para>This is just some [[make these words fat cursive]] random blather</para>
> The answer is, you can't. That's not what structural markup is all about.
> Rather, you should author descriptively, not presentationally:

That reminds me of a question that I have always wanted to ask some
more knowledgeable people in this subject: what's fundamentally wrong
with having both structural and graphical markup? Sure, people could
be tempted to use graphical markup instead of properly learning
structural markup, but that's a problem of education (and perhaps
punishment ;-)

I can think of a few applications where graphical markup seems the
only solution. Suppose, for example, that you want to write a manual
for a standard word processor, and you want to demonstrate what kind
of text the menu item "italic" produces.

Moreover, having the "escape mechanism" of explicit graphical markup
would lower the intimidation threshold that keeps people from starting
with structural markup. Anyone considering DocBook, for example, runs
the risk of not being able to produce an essential effect he wants
without a one-year course in DSSSL. It might then seem a better choice
to stay away from DocBook completely.

LaTeX is an example of a system that permits both structural and
graphical markup, and in my experience it has worked very well. I use
graphical markup very sparingly, and yet I am always glad that I have
it.
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Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr
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