On Mar 10, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Steffen Wolfrum wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> very carefully I am trying to make first steps towards XML and ConTeXt (with 
> MkIV).
> 
> Thus, I have enjoyed reading Thomas' MyWay "Getting Web Content and 
> pdf-Output from One Source":
> 
> I only kept wondering, how to keep control over the pdf-Output in terms of 
> fine-tuning the actual typesetting?
> A quick search in the archive gave me the answer that is attached below: by 
> using XMLentities.
> 
> But coming back to Thomas' issue "Getting Web Content and pdf-Output from One 
> Source":
> What about the other branch, getting web content?
> Doesn't the XML source gets "spoiled" by these inserted XMLentities that only 
> make sense when following the pdf-Output branch?
> Or will these XMLentities be silently ignored when feeding the XML source in 
> a CMS system or processing further to web content?
> 
> Apologies for asking such basic questions...
> 

I'm not really that advanced in this area myself, but from what I think I 
understood, you have to distinguish several aspects:

1. The MyWay addressed xhtml and mapping that to ConTeXt output. In html, you 
have a list of predefined entities 
(http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp) and I don't think that you can 
simply define your own entities in html - this simply is not the way this is 
meant to work. So in this case, the answer to your question would be: you're 
using the wrong tool.

2. In xml, on the other hand, there are almost no predefined entities, you can 
and must define entities yourself. But xml in itself cannot be shown as web 
content; you will need a xsl file which translates your xml to some sort of 
html. This will allow you to define most anything you want, and you can indeed 
add all these typographical niceties. You can then either use a tool such as 
xsltproc or saxon to produce a "clean" html version yourself or you can leave 
it to the browser. 

So: if you're primarily thinking of web content that should also be typeset, 
use html and be aware that you probably won't be able to use all the power of 
ConTeXt. If you're thinking of content that will be typeset but which you also 
want to use in other forms (web content being just one of them), use xml. In 
that case, you will have to learn at least some xslt as well...

Btw, the thread you quoted refers to mkii entities, you know that the 
deinitions in mkiv are somewhat different, right?

Thomas
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