[Refdb-users] "formatting" vs "information"
Status: Beta
Brought to you by:
mhoenicka
From: Marc H. <Mar...@fr...> - 2004-01-09 16:59:06
|
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. |