Re: Netscape, HTML, and Designers

http://ids.se/personal/magnus (MAGNUS@ids.idi.oclc.org)
Tue, 18 Oct 1994 20:28:32 -0500 (EST)


>From: dkearns{TCNET/HR/dkearns}@klaven.tci.com" 19-OCT-1994 00:56:25.72

>There's a new paradigm, a dynamic page,
>configurable by the user for his convenience. Imagine, for a moment, that
>you can push a button, and your Wall Stret Journal is now a tabloid, for
>easier reading on the subway. Or your Reader's Digest is now 11 X 14, with
>bigger fonts because your eyes don't work as well as they did 20 years ago.

The basic idea is to invest in information once = tagging the information
in SGML and then reuse it many times.

When you reuse the information you use different styles. Mosaic has
one set of stylesheets. Today I spoke with a customer about their
documentation problem. They produced market materials, service manuals.....

What he needed was the ability to reuse document components and put them
together to new virtual documents, because the market material used the
same information as the service manual just the style had changed.

Working in the real world you have to have control of your information.
Using the cut and paste way where you loose traceability is not the way into
the future. Instead I think the future is that you like we today can control
our software source code using SCCS or RCS tools for version control.
Should have the same possibility to do a impact analysis of changes of
information and have traceability.

As an earlier writer said:

Production environment ==> you tag the information intelligent

Distribution ==> you map the tagged information for the purpose the
information should be used

Today we see production of HTML which is a format that has to evolve
and Mosaic as a viewer producing one kind of style of info.

We also have to change the definition for documents and start speaking about
information units that can be reused.

/MS

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnus Salgo http://ids.se/personal/magnus
Information Dimensions Scandinavia The SGML or Die team
Phone: +46-8-205464
Mail: magnus@ids.idi.oclc.org