Re: WYSIWYG content development (was Re:RethinkingBrands)

>But even this quality (and I'd discourage usage of WYSIWYG to describe
>it) isn't specific to HTML in that it applies to most markup
>languages. LaTeX for instance requires no declaration of page size.

Forgive me for over simplifying the matter.

>Print preview.
>
>Different media calls for different displaying. While this may seem
>like a disadvantage, markup languages such as HTML actually use this
>to their great advantage. By seperating content and style, you can
>prepare a document for several media types with minimal redundancy.

I was not ignoring print preview, just pointing out the differences between 
how a webpage looks when displayed regularly in a browser, and when it is 
printed to paper. I've received many complaints in my time about how great a 
page looks in the browser, and how trashy it looks when printed. Even if the 
printed copy looks alright, it is frequently "not what I expected" because 
the page looks different on different display media.

>By putting the style declarations in the print media stylesheet,
>on-screen rendering won't take them into account.

There is going to be an inherent difference between what is printed and what 
is displayed in the browser. Authors of wikibooks would probably do well to 
use specialized formatting for each so everything looks decent.

> > (how do you render a page break on the computer
> > screen?).
>
>The screen is only one page; so you don't. This is why different media
>calls for different stylesheets.

It was a rhetorical question. You cannot sensically render a page break in 
the browser, but a printed book will require page breaks. This means that 
the formatting and styles for the print version of the book needs to be 
different from the in-browser version, even if only though the addition of 
page breaks and the like.

> > I think that there is alot that we could do straight from the
> > HTML, if we avoid things that don't work when printed, and if we are
> > willing to do the work to implement the proper styles for printing.
>
>What, exactly, are the displaying problems that need to be addressed?

A common example is people who use object widths incorrectly. For instance 
something large with a fixed width might not fit entirely onto a sheet of 
paper. Another issue is using a percentage width while not accounting for 
the fact that a sheet of paper is thinner (and in a completely different 
orientation) from a 1024x768 display monitor. If you use a small percentage 
for an object's width, it will be too small on paper and the contents inside 
will look "smooshed". It's not an underlying problem with the software or 
the rendering or anything, it's a problem with authors who don't take 
printed media into account when they design a page. Because it's author 
error, it's not a problem with all books, and I would like to think I've 
avoided in when I authored the pages in the [[Circuit Theory]] book.

--Andrew Whitworth

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