[Refdb-users] "formatting" vs "information"

[Marc H. <Mar...@fr...>]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Markus Hoenicka wrote:

> The dot is no information. It is formatting. Please separate data from
> formatting.

Generally speaking, I don't think there is a sharp line between
"formatting" and "information". Most of the time, formatting carries
information, it's a way to represent information. Of course, margin
sizes is quite far from that. But for instance, at the beginning of
most computer books you'll find something like this:

 - text using this font <courier> *means* that it is...
 - etc.

Would you say that punctuation for instance is formatting? Most
people don't call punctuation "formatting", because punctuation is
much more the responsibility of the author than of the publisher,
punctuation is much more about _meaning_ than esthetics, see for
instance:

 "Why Learn to Punctuate?"
 <http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/local/doc/punctuation/node02.html>
  (emphasized words by me)

  If your reader has to wade through your strange punctuation, she
  will have trouble following your *meaning*; at worst, she may be
  genuinely unable to understand what you've written. If you think I'm
  exaggerating, consider the following string of words, and try to
  decide what it's supposed to *mean*:

      We had one problem only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy

  Have you decided? Now consider this string again with differing
  punctuation:

      We had one problem: only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
      We had one problem only: Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
      We had one problem only, Janet knew: we faced bankruptcy.
      We had one problem only Janet knew we faced: bankruptcy.

  Are you satisfied that all four of these have completely different
  *meanings*?


So punctuation seems quite far from formatting... if not formatting
then punctuation is data? What is the purpose of punctuation? To
provide structure to sentences and paragraphs. Now what is the purpose
of "formatting" headings and indentation? The same: to represent
structure information, just at a higher level.  So we have on one side
of the line of the "classification": data, and on the other side:
formatting, but both with the exact same purpose! I find this
weird.
 The only difference I=A0see, is that punctuation is standardized since
ages, while there are many different ways to format headings. So maybe
we have a classification criterion here: "standardized" information is
data, while "formatting" is choice? Then let's get back for a second
to the use of a period as a mean to inform about an abbreviation: is
it "standardized" or "free"?  Some stylesheets want to enforce a
standard about this (in one way or the other). Others do not dare to
touch to this; they leave the decision to the author. Should a
database be on the "enforcers" side, or stay neutral?

In a good work relationship between a publisher and an author, there
is no clear demarcation line between the work of each other. Oh sure,
the author should never tell the publisher about the sizes of margins,
nor the publisher should ever tell the author about his formulas, but
there are a whole lot of things less clearly separated than that. A
publisher may often correct orthography and grammar (which is
also structure, btw). Is this a "formatting" job?

Of course, the issue at stake here is "just" about names, and not
about formatting in general, so let's forget most of the above.
Nevertheless, I wanted to underline that an opposition between data
and formatting is not an "evidence" generally speaking.

For those who want to know a bit more about "why the human brain can
not cope with unstructured information", I suggest this very famous
article <http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html#recoding>

Cheers,

Marc.