kovidgoyal said:
> CSS float, boxes with custom borders, boxes with
> background colors for emphasis. Drop caps. I could go on.
you know, i didn't even respond to this initially.
but i get the feeling that you think these points
are doing some kind of damage to my argument.
(otherwise, why _have_ you been so insistent that
i haven't responded to your points. i don't get it.)
the reason i didn't respond is because i hate
to rain on your parade with the big n-slash-a,
but "not applicable" is the only honest answer.
the big tip-off is that you went to the c.s.s. pile.
every one of your points here is _presentational_.
float? custom borders/colors? even _drop_caps_?
presentational. and _unimportant_ presentational.
nothing more than doodads, and almost trivially so.
i'm concerned with the _structural_ aspects of books.
so that's what my system puts into the file-format...
the _structures_ of a book are things like headers,
and whether a blob of text is a table, or a poem,
or a block-quote, or an epigram, or a dedication,
things like that. what it _is_. not what it looks like.
(some people call these "semantic" entities, but
that's a slight misuse of the term, in my opinion.
a chapter heading doesn't _mean_ anything --
which is how the word "semantic" is defined --
it simply _is_. so i use the term "structural"...
but where i _do_ agree with those other people
is that _presentational_ aspects are arbitrary,
and therefore do not need to be hard-coded.
i do not buy into their emphatic religion that
the "semantic" and presentational _must_ be
separated to the point of complete exclusion,
but agree any specific presentation is arbitrary.)
your issues here are completely presentational...
so, no, there's no way to code them in a .zml file.
further, that's because presentational options are
under the control of the _reader_, not the _author_.
that is, the author doesn't get to declare drop-caps.
or the coloring of boxes, or the corners on boxes, or
any presentational stuff like that. sorry about that.
(ok, not really. because, truth be told, my authors
won't even want to be bothered with stuff like that,
or they wouldn't start using z.m.l. in the first place.)
if the reader wants drop-caps, and the viewer-app
gives that choice to the reader, then it's the reader
who'll specify that choice, and have it displayed so.
and yes, even though drop-caps are a _doodad_,
i probably _will_ make 'em optional for the reader.
(they are not in any of my viewer-apps up to now,
and they are not high on the priority list of to-do's,
but they ain't on the bottom either, mostly because
they're gonna be really simple to write the code for.)
but as for custom-boxes and custom-backgrounds,
those _are_ indeed on the bottom of my priority list.
Quote:
personally, i'm quite delighted by the sunken look of
quoted passages on many forum boards, like this one, and
i guess it would be very easy to program, but i'll still
hold off on it, because it seems to be complete fluff,
and i do not want to give the impression that i have
stooped to the low level of coding the complete fluff.)
|
anyway, so yeah, if you have anything _structural_
that you think my z.m.l. cannot do, please say so...
but presentational doo-dads, i have no time for...
(but sure, i'll put them somewhere on the to-do list
if an honest-to-goodness z.m.l. user requests them.)
-bowerbird