Ron writes:
>1) Document - A work that is mostly textual in nature, but may include
images, maps, tables, or inclusion in other formats.
We do not presently distinguish between fiction and non-fiction
works, short or long works, etc. due to the difficulty of making
these decisions in particular cases. (Is "Communion" - the
book about extraterrestrials - fact or fiction? I'd call it
a novel but the author doesn't).
Let me introduce another vector of confusion, the distinction between
a document and its textual content. In the XML work, mere textual
content is being referred to as a "document." But what I want
to publish is not just the textual content of my document, but
all the things that go to make up its presentation. (So I've
taken to calling XML "documents" "instances.") In the print
world the textual content is bound to all those other things;
in electronic publishing it needn't be. Whatever the terms used
are, they shouldn't foster confusion and conflation. So, for
example, I would want Ron's fine definition of a document to
mean the content plus associated style sheet plus associated
copyright notice plus whatever else the publisher bundled it
up with. Some documents will have no other associated stuff,
such as simple HTML pages.
To further sharpen the point of Ron's definition, I'd emend it
slightly: "A work that is framed in text, although most of its
content could be nontextual, such as ...". There are coffe-table
photo books that aren't mostly text, but because they're framed
in text we perceive them as textual at their highest level;
and we have no difficulty distinguishing them from signed photos
or photo albums.
Regards,
Terry Allen Electronic Publishing Consultant tallen[at]sonic.net
http://www.sonic.net/~tallen/
Davenport and DocBook: http://www.ora.com/davenport/index.html
T.A. at Passage Systems: terry.allen[at]passage.com
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