Anton Shepelev <anton....@gmail.com> wrote: > I think, groff and TeX macro packages do provide a > means for structural mark-up, and, considering the > example above, it is of course possible to redefine > the macro .B to achieve the desired result? For > clarity, it could also be renamed as "EMPH". > > In my understanding, a package provides both con- > structs for structural mark-up and means to modify > their underlying "presentation", and the one is very > loosely coupled with the other, allowing to change > "presentation" without affecting the "structure" and > vice versa...
Personally, I don't think markup type is a binary function. Yes, there is presentational markup, that can be represented by (for example) low-level *roff commands. And yes, there is structural markup, like DocBook or DITA. Both have problems: Presentation markup provides full control over the appearance of a document, but do not leverage the strengths of computerized typesetting — consistency, and the ability to easily transform the markup to another type. Structural markup addresses consistency and transformation issues, but take all control away from the humans using the system. To my knowledge, it's pretty difficult to implement a feature like keeps in DocBook, or to squeeze spacing to eliminate ending a chapter with a page containing only two lines. But I think there's room for a third kind of markup. I call it *humanist* markup. Humanist markup has structure — headings, lists, paragraphs, are easy to denote and separated from presentation. The markup is simple to transform to other languages. But in the end, the human can step in and override things when necessary, because in the end the humans know what they want. Macro packages can provide that kind of flexibility, where BDSM markup languages won't. -- Larry