> >Fine, but what has it to do with HTML coding guidelines to produce a
> >consistent layout?
>
> Absolutely nothing I have very little interest in layout, but considerable
> interest in content. I've said before to conflate the submission of
> content with the delivery of content is wrong, the two are separate.
Not if the same bit of software is dealing with both.
> >Yes it does, if we use a document management system - you will be able to
> >attach metadata to a document.
>
> You mean metadata outside the body of the document? That is better than
> nothing but it itsn't as useful as marking up the content logically. Where
> is the metadata to come from?
It's entered when you add the document. This would be your "document
project name" and "document level" data.
> It seems a basic mistake to separate the
> content from the logical structure especially when its easier not to.
I'm not saying you need to separate the content from the logical
structure.
> >With your XML dialect, you are attempting to re-solve a well-understood
> >problem in website management. We should use an already-produced solution
> >rather than rolling our own. This would be an order of magnitude less work
> >than defining everything from the ground up, as you suggest, writing all
> >the tools, and then (and this is the really impossible bit) getting people
> >to use them.
>
> No, the XML dialect is an example of an implementation and exactly the kind
> of implementation that XML was designed for,
Yes. Indeed. However, I am disputing that a) we need to use any
specialised application of XML at all and b) if there were advantages to
doing so, that we'd be able to persuade anyone to use it.
> >We will have enough trouble getting document authors to use Mozilla
> >Composer rather than Netscape Composer without them having to learn a
> >whole new XML dialect.
>
> They don't have to, I've already said that, they may learn and use it if
> they wish but there's no need to compel them. Relatively few people need
> to be involved in marking up documents whether it uses a novel XML variant
> or DocBook.
Do you really think we will find long-term volunteers to do the extremely
tedious job of accepting documents in whatever forms you allow, converting
them to this XML dialect, just to watch them get converted back to HTML
again?
Simon, I don't want to be rude, but there is not a snowball's chance that
we will go down this route. Among other criteria, we are looking for:
1) Relative ease of deployment - everyone is busy
2) Low barriers to document contribution
3) Low maintenance
It fails all of these. If I suggested to [EMAIL PROTECTED] that what
www.mozilla.org needs is for us to write an entire document-handling
system based around an invented XML dialect for document description,
their reaction would be... interesting.
Gerv
