Article: 21377 of comp.text.sgml
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From: Chris Maden <crism@rosetta-stone.ora.com>
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex,comp.text.sgml,comp.text.pdf
Subject: Re: SGML for thesis
Date: 28 Apr 1998 17:16:49 -0400
Organization: O'Reilly & Associates
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Louis Vosloo <support@YandY.com> writes:

> If you are interested in electronic publishing you may want to
> consider using TeX and Acrobat PDF instead.  The generation of the
> on-line edition then is almost `for free' (running Distiller), and
> you can of course have all the nice hyper-text, color etc. features
> available in other formats.

So the advantages would be that my customers get to see ITC Garamond
and my carefully chosen aspect ratios, and possibly higher-quality
figures.

The disadvantages would be a possible need for users to install new
software; inaccessibility to the blind, the nearsighted, the users
with small screens, and the UNIX users sitting at a dumb console; a
refusal to let the user choose an aspect ratio and color suited to his
own needs; and the aesthetic unpleasantness of distribution in a
semi-proprietary format.[*]

Plus, I can go from SGML to just about any other format, including XML
with XSL stylesheets once they're supported, which will give me nearly
as good display capabilities as TeX and PDF, but with more flexibility
since rendering happens on the user's system.  And, if I decide to
reorder some content (like moving index links to the top of the book
home page, which I did today), I can do that with a change to the
generation stylesheet; while LaTeX allows global changes in
presentation, reordering of content is a little more difficult.

So no thanks, I think I'll stick with HTML (and later XML)
distribution.  My content is important, not my flash and glamour.[***]

> If you have a real need for SGML, then you may want to use TeX as
> the backend for it. Some other publishers have gone that route.

That's true, and I should look into jadetex.  But since I need to go
to a word processing format anyway for authors to create followup
editions, I might as well use that for the printed output.

-Chris

[*] Yes, I know the PDF specification is published and freely
available.  It's still subject to change at the whim of a single
company.[**]

[**] Yeah, yeah, so is HTML, in some sense.  But a little less so.

[***] Lest anyone on c.t.t misinterpret my remarks and my .sig as
anti-TeX, let me assure you that that's not the case.  I am a
TeXnician, and consider TeX the ideal tool for high-quality
typesetting.  But while LaTeX does a pretty good job of keeping
semantics and presentation separate, information therein simply isn't
anywhere close to as reusable as information in SGML.  TeX's one very
high-quality tool, but it's still just one tool in a toolbox.
-- 
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"<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
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