> > It's interesting that it seems to be such a great controversy > around this, I > would think that many authors would relish the fact that > instead of spawning > out a multitude of html tags they can use a few simple and > meaningful ones. > But then again maybe the claim is that most cms's uses a > WYSIWYG editor > and they don't have to write tags at all, but still.
Ah, here's the problem: You're assuming that most writers are thinking of the Web as their primary medium. At newspapers and magazines, for the most part, they're not. A newspaper or magazine reporter or writer "grew up" with a completely different paradigm than you kids today. In a newspaper, the fundamental unit is the article (except at USA Today, perhaps, where the basic unit is the paragraph...). In that unit, all that really matters are telling the story and getting the facts right. Indexing, etc., are all things that, traditionally, are left to some librarian sitting with endless rolls of microfilm. Yes, when even the smallest newspapers have Web sites, most reporters have heard of this Web thing. But it's still hard to get such writers to think about information management - especially since that's likely to mean more work, not less, for them. Doesn't make it any easier that many newspapers still use older systems that couldn't support this sort of tagging at the PC level anyway. Adam Gaffin Executive Editor, Network World Fusion [EMAIL PROTECTED] / (508) 490-6433 / http://www.nwfusion.com "I programmed my robotic dog to bite the guy who delivers the electronic mail." -- Kibo -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
