So then I get to tell people, "Well, you get to learn *this* language
to write your document, and then you get to learn *that* language for
actually making your document look like you want it to." Oh, they'll
love that.
Marc's viewpoint: style sheets are an artificial construct inflicted
on us because of the whole non-presentation philosophy we've been
using (more or less, but enough to keep this particular set of
problems alive), which I argue is wholly inappropriate for document
delivery front-ends and is crippling our system. Why not strip out a
level of complexity (and user headeaches) by having our front ends
simply handle a layout format suitable from the ground up for
front-end display of documents? Publishers can still use SGML out the
wazoo on the back end if they want; if they don't and all they want is
documents that look the way they want them to look, we don't inflict
it on them.
(Actually, "why don't I just implement..." is a moot point right now,
as I'm not in the client business anymore. But anyway.)
Cheers,
Marc