Marcel Birthelmer wrote:

> but there is a strong case to be made for function-WITH-form

Funny to read this here :)

When I was young (in the 60ies), (some, of course) US textbooks were (in
Germany) /the/ example of how to present technical matters in a useful and
easy to digest manner -- function-with-FORM, so to speak :)

The main elements that made the good examples different at the time were
not so much in the structure of the text itself, but mostly in the
graphical presentation. Use of colors (not too many), appropriate use of
bold and italics, page layout, diagrams, borders around text -- all these
and other graphical presentation elements in the function of helping
understand (that is especially without cluttering the page). At the time,
that was a revolution. 

Then of course came the dark age of the ASCII purist, glorifying the lack
of means for a more appreciable presentation :)

Gerhard

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