>> At the risk of incurring the Wrath Of People Who Attempt To Fend Off
>> Sensible And Easily Anticipated Objections By Labelling Those Who Raise
Them
>> Curmudgeons :) let me suggest in return that with a few very specialized
>> exceptions, it is difficult to imagine any subject oriented FAQ that
>> actually requires HTML in order to express its contents usefully.
>
>A newspaper doesn't "require" different typefaces and formatting to
>"express its contents usefully", but every newspaper uses them.
>Formatting allows you to increase the information density while
>improving readability. Hyper-links do an even better job of this.
Hmmm. HTML was designed to be a "text-markup" language, not a "page design"
language. The purpose of the tags is not just to make the page look good,
but to help express the meaning of the document.
HTML was designed (originally) to be a common markup language for all kinds
of web-enabled devices, not just computer-and-screen. For example, it was
supposed to allow for text-to-speech readers for the sight impaired.
Whether or not text is "bold" (how the text appears on a page or screen)
means nothing to these devices.
HTML lost it's way with atrocities such as <B> and <FONT>, but these are now
deprecated in favour of <STYLE>.
A well-designed HTML document can actually be more portable across systems
and platforms than a "text" file. This depends highly on the content of the
HTML file, and the engine server it up and the engine the grabs it and
renders it.
For the record, I maintain my FAQ in SGML and use some basic tools to make
HTML and text versions from this single source point. The same tools could
be used to make almost any format file from the same SGML source.
jdv
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