dive into mark

Matt Bridges: On separation of content and layout. Matt summarizes the argument that Dave and others have been giving for weeks now: it doesn’t matter what my HTML looks like, because I can always just render it in another format. And the whole time, I’ve heard a little nagging voice in the back of my head, the same voice that warns me to watch out when I’m watching a magician, or a three card monte dealer, or negotiating with a used car salesman. “Watch out,” it says, “they’re about to fool you. Wait for it… wait for it… Whoops! Did you see it? Nope, you missed it; now you’re screwed.”

Once I have content in XML, it doesn’t matter if the HTML output of a transformation uses tables, font tags, or any other HTML no-no’s, as long as it displays correctly in the intended medium. As long as content exists somewhere in XML, it’s re-use is only a parse away.

Did you see it? Nope, you missed it; now you’re screwed. Why are you screwed? Because you can only view Matt’s content in his intended medium. Using a text-only browser? Too bad, that wasn’t one of his intended mediums. Using a speech synthesizer? Braille reader? Not intended. Requires intervention by the author before it’ll work (or work well). Must be explicitly supported, constantly maintained. Or worse, requires an expensive content management system. Even if it is eventually supported, it will no doubt have a separate URL (”click here for the text-only version of Matt’s content”), thereby cutting off those users who come in from the outside, linked straight into inaccessible content that doesn’t render well on their “unintended” client.

My blog exists somewhere on blogger’s servers in a display-agnostic format. So it doesn’t matter if I use tables or CSS to render this page. If I need to change it, I just change my template later, and everything I’ve published so far magically conforms to whatever new design I choose.

OK, that solves the problem for you. But I don’t see you giving out your Blogger password so the rest of us can access your display-agnostic content. The only window we have into your content is in the format you choose to publish. If you choose to publish it in an inaccessible manner, that’s your right; hey, it’s your content. But don’t pretend that you’ve solved the content-layout separation problem. You’ve only solved it for you; the rest of us are screwed.

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