----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Tchistopolskii <paul@xxxxxxx>
> > > Also, isn't it  handy to have just  one stylesheet for different media
?
> >
> > But generally not a good idea. The way you format something for one
media is
> > rarely the way it should be formatted for another.
>
> Very strong sentence.

Not really. It is one of the most commonly cited benefits of generic markup.

> I have another point of view after talking to some real-life clients.

I have been producing dual-media (print and web) for five years and I have
*never* come across a document I would by preference display the same online
as in print.

For a start, print is paginated. It has headers and footers, page numbers,
tables of contents.
On the web, you either have a scroll or multiple pages and if the latter,
these are broken up generally according to the structure of the document,
not a fixed page size. You have navigation bars to move, not only through
pages, but through the hierarchical structure.

Consider delivery of the same document to a third medium: a PDA. There are
completely different approaches that need to be taken to fonts, pagination
and navigation.

Now sure, these different stylesheets will have a lot in common and you can
modularise your stylesheets to achieve this. But to produce exactly the same
formatting objects for print, web and PDA is a really bad idea!

James
--
James Tauber / jtauber@xxxxxxxxxxx / www.jtauber.com
Maintainer of : www.xmlinfo.com,  www.xmlsoftware.com and www.schema.net
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