Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Well, I never said it would be easy. 
But most content can be defined by styles, and style sheets can alter the content according to the presentation form factor. In point of fact, very little content cannot be redesigned to be presented in that way. And most of those who insist their material cannot be so altered, as I suggested earlier, simply do not want to try... whether it is out of laziness, or out of a belief that their content is "perfect as presented," and MUST NOT be altered.
We are talking about people who have optimized their presentations for paper, and who simply do not want to have to reinvent the wheel... or to turn their wheel into a jet engine. They'd much rather find a way to have someone else throw their wheel through the air... |
Actually, it *is* easy.
And its been done.
(Stylesheets is one way.)
Another way is older, pre-web, even:
Way back in the last century, in the heydey of desktop publishing, in the (gasp!) 80's programs like Ventura Publisher and later MS Publisher allowed you to completly alter the layout of a publication just by swapping out a single template file that defined the size, shape, and position of how the individual elements were to be positioned on the page. The elements were automatically repositioned according to the new template.
I don't think the technology has become a lost art.
To do malleable-layout publications all that is needed is a presentation/reading app that can select any of a handful of template sets *embedded* in the publication file depending on the display size and orientation and any applicable user settings. Each template set would be optimized for a specific corporate look and philosophy and would include templates for a variety of *standard* display devices and/or modes.
Since the templates can be reused, each publisher would define their corporate layout set once and then call them up on a page by page (or section by section) basis.
For a lot of publications all that is needed is one template per targetted display mode but the concept allows as many individual template sets as needed. Magazines, for example, generally only use a fixed number of page layouts per issue and to maintain their individual look conform to those fixed layouts issue after issue for years at a time.
It is no different, conceptually, than embedded fonts.
The rendering of the document then becomes a two stage process; first, building the empty page layout from the designated template for that page and then filling the layout elements with the appropriate content.
Hardly magical.
And I shouldn't even have to bring it up because this is how page layouts are done for print.
It doesn't send the formatting gurus to the unemployment line, or increase their workload, either.
It does however require them to learn a new trick.
That might be a problem I suppose.
