[whatwg] Authoring Re: several messages about HTML5

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 09:29 +0000 UTC, on 2007-02-21, James Graham wrote:

[...]

> The difficult problem is not to produce an editor that encourages the
> use of semantic markup, it is to produce an editor that encourages the
> use of semantic markup and would be chosen in preference to e.g. MS
> Frontpage or Dreamweaver by the typical WYSIWYG user.

It depends on which types of authoring tools you look at. Tools like
Dreamweaver are geared more towards design, and thus used by people who care
more about looks than about semantics. But within a larger organisation,
you're more likely to have a CMS where many different people need to simply
enter/edit content, without dealing with presentational aspects. In such
situations it would be a benefit if people aren't  bothered with having to
make design decisions. Just let them enter the content and describe its
structure/meaning. (This seems somewhat comparable to databases, where people
are forced to enter data in a specific structured form, without having to
deal with the underlying magic.)

Such an approach can make things easier for both those who enter content and
those who are in charge of suggesting a presention of that content. The whole
publication process becomes more managable. I think that's a benefit that
will be recognised.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>