Gerhard wrote regarding 'Re: [OT] Paragraph Formatting; was "How to read Battery voltage with PIC"' on Wed, Nov 16 at 06:40:
> Danny Sauer wrote:
> 
> >>> (HTML and RTF are for presentation, not communication - if color and
> >>> fonts are required, the communicating is being done incorrectly).
> >> 
> >> That's a pretty major generalization. :)
> > 
> > One of the few cases where one's accurate. ;)
> 
> This may be part of a language barrier, but what's exactly the difference
> between presentation and communication for you? 

By "presentation" I essentially mean "enhanced formatting".  The
content should be able to stand on its own, without the help of
stylistic elements beyond line breaks and paragraphs; without anything
but simple grouping.  Once that goal's met, *then* it's fine to go
back through and enhance the content with fancy formatting.  However,
it should merely be an enhancement, not a way to compensate for poorly
thought-out communication.  Anyone who's ever seen someone give a
Power Point presentation probably knows what I mean - all of the
sliding in text and ill-chosen sound effects in the world don't make
poorly-constructed content useful. :)

[...]
> hard breaks, of course. A tag system like a simplified HTML (closer to the
> original version, with only content type markers) would not require any of
> this.

You mean modern HTML/XML/SGML with CSS/etc, which separates the content from the
presentation - allowing the end user to apply a transform as
appropriate for his viewing environment while still getting the same
content. :)

--Danny
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