Layout conversion

There are a number of different strategies for "translating" a document from one form of presentation into another. These strategies may be conveniently defined in terms of our five-component document model:

REALITY CONTENT ARCHITECTURE LAYOUT RENDERING REALITY CONTENT ARCHITECTURE LAYOUT RENDERING

Each of the cells in this table represents a particular kind of conversion in one direction or the other, some of which are less plausible than others, of course.

In the present miniproject, we will select LAYOUT-LAYOUT translation.

Effectively, this means that the following needs to be specified:

1. Specification (1): the style of the source document, as an informal stylesheet, and as a stylesheet table such as the one we have been discussing in class.
2. Specification (2): the style of the target document (for instance as an HTML stylesheet - this example is only for characharacter styles).
3. Specification (3): a translation function from (1) to (2).

If the same basic format is used for the tables, this is quite straightforward. However, different media use different notations, which complicate the matter somewhat.

In preparation for this miniproject, we will examine the representation of document structure and layout in the notation of HTML, the traditional document description language for hypertext on the World Wide Web.

Medium characterisation: Word ... WYSIWYG, ...

SYSTEM MEDIUM FORMATS STRATEGIES ...

MS-Word Computer: Paper Screen WYSIWYG Printer File: - DOC - RTF - HTML - ...

Computer: Internet Browser File: - HTML ...

Medium-specific layout conversion: Look at Word, DOC, RTF and HTML formats with a plain text editor. Definition of layout conversion table, i.e. from one style table to another.