[sword-devel] HELP! Need your feedback on XML Markup Language

[Mike Sangrey]

Bobby Nations <bobby@bobbynations.com> said:
> Generally, it's best when designing a tagging language using XML to
> leave the presentation elements out of the XML entirely and let the
> XSL handle that aspect of things.  That goes for quotes as well, since
> they're additions to the original texts (that is, they weren't there
> in the Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew originals).  That goes for all
> punctuation marks as well. 

100% agree with separating presentation from content.  The difficulty
comes in when you need to mark semantics that will have a presentation
impact.  In other words, and this is the only name I can think to give
it, it's `presentational semantics'.  The quote problem is a good 
illustration of this.  Another might be a particular hunk of text
that you want to stay together and not be split across pages when
it is rendered.

Secondly, and perhaps I'm nitpicking, but just because Greek (say)
didn't have quotation marks as part of the symbols they used has
nothing to do with whether English has them.  Greek used other means
to indicate quotes; the Greek word `hoti', for example.  Yes, that's
right some times `hoti' is translated as `"..."'.  It's the difference
between form and meaning.  Different languages will package the meaning
in different ways, but the meaning is identical.  In a certain context
hoti means what follows is a quote.

Hope that helps.
-- 
Mike Sangrey
msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
                        "The first one last wins."
            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."