Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!lll-winken!arisia!janssen@holmes From: janssen@holmes (Bill Janssen) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Is DTP Dead? Message-ID: <3416@arisia.Xerox.COM> Date: 6 Oct 89 00:12:22 GMT References: <6398@ficc.uu.net> <8910040136.AA11446@gnomee.pa.dec.com> <6414@ficc.uu.net> Sender: news@arisia.Xerox.COM Reply-To: janssen@holmes (Bill Janssen) Organization: PARC.Xerox.COM Lines: 36 This interesting discussion is similar to one in comp.mail.multi-media a bit earlier, but a bit different with the reference to RFC's and a base of stored documents. It is important to realize that the format for the documents should be a mark-up language, not just raw text. The mark-up language should be chosen so that it marks ideas, not formatting. The text should not have marks that indicate that a certain word is "italic" or "bold", but rather that that word is an "important-concept" or "reference-to-system". This allows semantic content to be preserved, and, with the addition of a file defining appearances, can be processed into a nice presentation format as well (which might in fact be PostScript, or TeX dvi, or InterPress, or raw line-printer output). Some have pointed out that with appropriate defs, PostScript can be used as a semantic mark-up language. The mechanism used in PostScript for string constants seems to be a little clumsy for that, but no doubt it is possible to get around that. This use seems inappropriate for PostScript, though, considering that it was designed for page description. Another criterion for the mark-up language would be to be reasonably readable, even in raw form, so that it could be editted with a dumb editor, and the documents printed without the formatting programs. Some system such as LaTeX seems to provide a better model for this type of language than does PostScript. Of course, two programs, for turning the marked-up documents into PostScript and line-printer, should be written and placed into the document repository for readers to use. Bill -- Bill Janssen janssen.pa@xerox.com (415) 494-4763 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304