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Date:Mon Sep 23 11:53:51 2003 
Subject:Re: help system - ideas wanted 
From:Chris Dollin 
Volume-ID:1030923.01 

Roger.Evans@itri.brighton.ac.uk wrote:

> Chris Dollin wrote:
> 
>>Roger.Evans@itri.brighton.ac.uk wrote:
 
>>>The tex/data markup issue is blurred by using 'standoff' markup, which
>>>might be worth at least thinking about in this context. The idea of
>>>standoff markup is that you represent text-style markup as a separate
>>>parallel data-style XML object, which contains pointers into the text
>>>document. Its nice because its not invasive, and ebcause you can have
>>>parallel multiple markups of a text that are not tree-structured with
>>>respect to one another (type 'standoff markup' into google for more info
>>>on it). So Steve could have one file which is plain text, and a parallel
>>>file that marks up hyperlinks, text attributes etc in it, for systems
>>>that want to exploit that. The downside is that your 'document' is
>>>potentially distributed across multilple files that can get out of
>>>sync...
>>
>>I think that kills the idea stone dead.
>>
> No, its no different from maintaining both a plain text version and an
> html version of a document. 

Well, I'd regard that as supporting evidence for my position! I *would
not* maintain both a plain & html version of the same document. I
would maintain one document and generate the other(s). 

> Actually it is a bit different but only in a
> positive way. If you've got a plain text master and a derived html
> version there's a risk someone will change the html version instead of
> the master. 

When they lose all their changes, they will learn ... although one 
would hope the environment discouraged that particular mistake, because
otherwise it would be so easy to make.

> With standoff-markup that's not really possible, because the
> standoff markup references the plain text content directly, rather than
> containing a copy of it.

But that means that changes to the plain text quietly invalidate the
markup, yes? And possibly in such a way that it's not evident that the
markup is marking-up the wrong stuff?
 
-- 
Chris "electric hedgehog" Dollin
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