Re: Style Sheets for HTML

Chris Lilley, Computer Graphics Unit (lilley@v5.cgu.mcc.ac.uk)
Tue, 31 May 1994 11:22:41 GMT


Sarr Blumson said (over on www-talk):
Jonathan Abbey writes:

But graphics files cannot be manipulated at all.. running OCR on
html-embedded GIF's? Ugh.

(Assuming you're responding to my comments about manipulating documents for
easier viewing) Of course they can; I do it alot for contrast [etc]

Why is it that as soon as anyone takes notice of the past few years experience
of using HTML - ie that many users want some control of the formatting, and will
go through hoops to get it - invariably someone leaps in with the suggestion to
just send a pixmap of the formatted page. As if the inevitable price to pay for
document design was removal of machine readable content.

The idea is to have some control over formatting AS WELL AS sending searchable,
parsable text. Is that such a difficult concept?

Having hints or options, with sensible defaults for those who don't want to
bother with formatting, seems a clean and backwards compatible concept. Having a
link to an external style sheet, so that multiple docs can use the same style,
also looks like a good idea.

--
Chris Lilley
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