[Doc-SIG] Re: [Docutils-develop] master plan for interpreted text?

[Beni Cherniavsky]

On 2003-02-04, David Goodger wrote:

> Ian Bicking wrote:
> > I think there should be some plan in place to add extra types, but only
> > add them as people request them.
> ...
> > Anyway, in summary: just because you *can* identify a semantic
> > classification doesn't mean you should.  I seldom see the benefit, and
> > before introducing more complexity into the system there should be a
> > concrete reason someone wants to do so.  E.g., they want to mark
> > glossary terms for later compilation -- a very concrete desire.
>
> That's reasonable.  But what I'm trying to establish is where to draw the
> line?  How much demand is enough to allow a new role in?  It's been up to my
> judgement so far.  Unless I hear some compelling arguments otherwise, I
> suppose it will remain that way.
>
You can draw quite a good line for the commonly needed roles.  The ones
you throw out are not appropriate for the common implementation but are
specific people will want them for themselves.  Any big document / group
of documents has roles specific to it.

> > But if it is more work to restrict the kinds of semantic inline markups then
> > to allow arbitrary semantics, then perhaps arbitrary semantics make more
> > sense.  In which case perhaps there should be a directive to give rendering
> > hints (and hopefully definition hints!) in the document itself, as otherwise
> > the document won't be portable.
>
> There won't be arbitrary semantics, and there's no need or room for
> rendering hints in the markup.  That's really basic: keep the style separate
> from the structure.
>
Great idea.  But for doing it, you must be able to define your own classes
of structure.  Think of it: would CSS be useful without classes and ids?

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@tx.technion.ac.il>

If somebody builds a time machine he can gateway the Internet to itself
with a time offset.  I wonder what implications that would have...