Re: Word Processors

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

John R Sheets wrote:
> 
> Timothy Ritchey wrote:
> >
> > If they would take the same time instead to mark up
> > a text contextually with information about the structure of the
> > document, based on standard XML/SGML DTDs, they would be adding
> > information which would actually make such documents USABLE beyond the
> > simple act of printing them out.
> 
> Yes, that's a very good point that I'd missed.  All the style hoopla
> should be external to the document (i.e. passively declared).  Another
> added benefit is that styles will be user-customizable.
> 
> With Word, as I understand it, templates are more like rubber stamps
> than filters.  You use them to create the base document, then modify it
> from there.  With an XML approach, the styles would not be embedded.
> Getting back to my resume example, the resume document itself would not
> change for different styles.  You'd load it with a different display
> filter (that's a style sheet, right?), which would change the font and
> possibly rearrange the order that the employment history info is
> displayed.

I just had a thought. Using XML, there would actually be two different
types of templates.

One of them would be the document template. It would be what you're used
to from Word etc. -- a partially written document with blanks to fill
in. E.G., letterheads.

The other type would be new XML DTDs! Think about it. A resume template
shouldn't just be a regular document with the headers already there, but
a module which gives the program some understanding about resume
structure. That way, various parts of the program (e.g., a style
toolbar) could reconfigure themselves to be resume-specific!

In practice, a template would probably be a combination of new DTDs,
text, and stylesheets. A resume template, for example, would have the
resume DTD (to constrain the app's behavior to resume-specific stuff), a
few default documents which, for example, contain the standard headers
in a few languages, and a few stylesheets which you can switch between
to get different looks to your resume.

Tim