Re: Word Processors

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

sun wrote:
> 
> again, i think we should take care to clarify _where_ the feature
> belongs, but i've always believed the computer should speak the human's
> language, rather than the other way around. for instance, typeface names
> and sizes have been around long before computers and are industry
> standards. therefore i think they should be used instead of arbitrary
> tags the program's author decides on. some layout artist somewhere
> (probably me) is going to get mightily pissed if he thinks the author
> has done a poor job of deciding what a "header of a sub section" should
> look like and discovers that he doesn't have the power to change it.

Yes, but I don't think that's going to be a problem.  Assuming the WP
uses XML, the author would only be able to define the _type_ of data,
not the way it's displayed.  The author will declare, for example, that
this data is Header 1, this other data is Descriptive Text, and this is
a Footnote, and this is a Graph Caption, etc.  Then, the layout artist
will define a bunch of style sheets to describe how each element should
be displayed.  If you don't like a particular pitch or font, you change
it in your style sheet.  That info wouldn't be imbedded in the actual
document text, a la Word.

The entry-level user will see, e.g., Footnote, Graph Caption, etc.  More
advanced users would bring up the style sheet editor to reassign
specific fonts, point sizes, etc. to elements.

John