Some thoughts from the new kid on the block:
[Jay Osako] No problem. A lot of this is, from a programmer's
viewpoint, counterintuitive, and lots of people have trouble
seeing the whole pattern. OTOH, a new viewpoint always helps.
I'm not exactly an old hand, either.
Transcluded text should retain as much of its original markup as
possible. For example, if the author has highlighted a phrase with
italic, then that phrase should be italics in the transcluded copy
as well. (If the entire copy is italic, then the typesetter's
convention is that what was originally italics is set in Roman, i.e.
un-italicized, to preserve the distinction.) Similarly, headings should
still look like headings, tables should still look like tables, etc..
[Jay Osako]In HTML, this makes a certain amount of sense.
Remember, however, that in Xanadu all these structures are
'really' links; the data are still the same regardless. OTOH, it
is possible to have a link to, say, the first link in a table, and
expect the table structure to be rebuilt on the viewer's end.
No markup in the transcluded text should affect text which follows.
Thus, any open-ended tags should be presumed closed at the end of the
transclusion. For example, I would hate to embed an HTML document with
an open <H2> code and have the remainder of my document suddenly appear
in large, bold-face type.
[Jay Osako]
Definitely. That's one of these reasons embedded tags are such a problem;
you have to process the whole document to determine what the state
of any given part is.
A precedent to consider is how Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files work.
The master PostScript file preserves its graphics state before calling
the EPS file, and restores it afterwards, as a defense against the EPS
file leaving things different than it found them.
I am anxiously awaiting Ted's article, "Embedded Markup Considered
Harmful."
- Rich<<application/ms-tnef>>