To style or not to style?

The present trend in the development of publishing software is to separate the content of a document from its formatting in a specific environment. This seems quite logical that content providers would produce the necessary information using the appropriate workflow automation tools, which reflects the logic of their occupation, rather than the need for distributing the documents to all kinds of users; as soon as there is something to present, professional designers would work on publication details, to attract audience.

This is the logic of economy based on the universal division of labor. Indeed, in such an economy, professional design often looks an order of magnitude better than any amateur formatting. And, of course, any formatting considerations should not influence, say, the very formulation of a legal statement. However, this is not as simple in reality.

When an author creates a document, he/she/it often assumes specific formatting intended to reveal the document's organization, simplify navigation and search, focus the reader’s attention on the key sentences. It is well known that a short paragraph is much easier to read, a simply structured sentence is usually clearer, and one-column layout is simpler to navigate. If, on some alternative media, the original structure is changed, that will often result in modified perception. Of course, fewer paragraphs are better to pack more text in a limited volume; however, merging paragraphs on the editor's demand will destroy the inner logic of the text, since each paragraph conveys a relatively closed system of thoughts (it can be considered as an analog of a block in programming).

There are also documents that essentially include formatting. For instance, the text of a poem is usually laid out by the author in a quite definite way, to control the perceived intonation. Any change in layout, punctuation or wording would kill the original. Even apparently innocent replacement of the long m-dash with the shorter n-dash (as many editor tend to make without a slightest hesitation) can result in a changed impression, a different perception flow. Yes, there is always certain flexibility, but the width of the zone of admissible variations very individual, and even variations within the zone are not neutral, they are perceived as different hues, albeit of the same principal intonation [1].

But every kind of media has its own laws, and there can be no perfect translation from one format to another, as there can be no exact translation from one language to another. Still, people speak in many tongues, and computers output data to different peripherals. We have to transfer documents from one environment to another, and admit the inevitable changes. We use photographs of paintings instead of paintings themselves, digital records instead of live voice and computer keyboard instead of a pen. However, like in belles-lettres, the quality of translation can differ, and one can always tell a good translation from a poor one. The art of publishing is the art of careful interpretation.

In integrated publishing software, the author is given the formatting tools, so that the details of formatting can be indicated from the very beginning. There are numerous conversion filters that transform the document to other formats, trying to preserve its look wherever possible. Advertisers tell the customers that they will be able to quickly build, say, a Web site from scratch without knowing anything about HTML. But did you ever compare a Web page produced by MS Word HTML converter (or FrontPage output) with the same page manually formatted in HTML? The latter is several times smaller, much more readable, and allows interpretation by a much wider range of browsers. In the nearest future, one can hardly expect fast enough connection in every home, to neglect the file size considerations. And the newest browsers are not universally acceptable, since they do not give the user much choice in available functionality. Thus, I still use an old Netscape 3 navigator to browse the Web: it is fast, convenient and well controllable; as a bonus, I get no pop-up window proliferation, if I happen to encounter a commercial site. Of course, I want my Web pages to be readable by those, who do not recognize CSS, or do not have all kinds of fonts installed. I want those who do not like frames to have my pages without frames, and leave frames for those who are annoyed by persistent scrolling out of navigation. That is, I want my documents to be adaptable to any environment, without too much self-restriction. Is it too much?

Unfortunately, there is no software that could satisfactorily produce multistyle documents. Ideally, I would only give hints as to which formatting is essential, and leave the rest to the publishing system. The publishing system would have all kinds of filters to produce quality output on any media, on the fly.

So once again, separation of formatting from content? Not exactly. The problem is to adapt the level of separation to the user needs. The user should be given a number of choices, on different levels of complexity. If needed, fine tuning is allowed; in general, only some gross features would matter. As one can observe, this was the original idea behind TeX; however, in the current implementations, this tool is utterly unusable, with no way to overcome the incompatibility of different versions, brands or templates. The numerous Web standards provide yet another example of the same failure; despite all the attempts to develop a unified document model, we have many poorly compatible implementations, and there is no way to make a document available to all kinds of browsers, once it has been designed in some document production system.

As a result, designing a good Web portal that would serve to all kinds of users is still a challenge to programmers. The commercial portal builders are based on various kinds of middleware, which play the role of the glue, connecting the client interface with the content. However, the main feature is lacking in most such products: flexibility of distinction, ability to move a part of formatting to content and a part of content to formatting. Such a hierarchical refoldability [2] is a must for any acceptable multistyle publishing application.