RE: Why map to <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc?

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxx>]

> In the FrameMaker and Webworks lists in recent days there has been some
> discussion of making sure that headings in an FM source document are always
> ordered hierarchically.  For example, if you have a FM Heading1 mapped to,
> say, a WebWorks pHeading1 (= HTML <h1>) you should not follow it with a
> Heading3 mapped to pHeading3 (= <h3>) without an intervening Heading2
> (pHeading2, <h2>).  Correspondents have been insisting that headings must
> follow a strict hierarchy or the FM to Webworks Help conversion blows up.

I wouldn't understand such a limitation in any HTML conversion tool.
HTML in itself poses no requirements on strict hiarchical heading levels,
even though it's considered "natural" to use <H1>, <H2>, etc. in order,
for a document with heading levels. If indeed Webworks Publisher puts
such a requirement on the conversion setup, it's a strong disadvantage.

> However, I have previously used mif2go to produce MS HTML Help from FM
> files and did not even bother to try to map the FM para and char formats to
> the native HTML tags.  Instead, I mapped every paragraph format to a <p>
> tag with a para 'class' selector and every character format to a <span> tag
> with a char 'class' selector.
> Thus hc_ChapTitle mapped to <p class="hcChapTitle"> and ei_EmphasisItalic
> mapped to <span class="eiEmphasisItalic">.  Then I created a CSS with
> .hcChapTitle and .eiEmphasisItalic formats.

I must admit I would prefer the built-in structural elements of HTML
to any paragraph class specification via a CSS. Why do you really see
this as an advantage? You make your document dependent on a CSS file,
which may not be cross-browser compliant, and a CSS file can be lost,
renamed or not read correctly for other reasons. My somewhat uninformed
impression is that CSS is even more of a "moving target" than HTML.

I know you wanted to know how WebWorks supports such an implementation,
but I'm keen to know the benefits you see with this, compared to a more
traditional, straight-forward solution using HTML paragraph tags.
Do you really need the detailed descriptivness of a paragraph "tag"
that CSS offers, or do you dislike the way the browser interprets the
standard HTML tags?


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Thomas Michanek, Technical Writer
IAR Systems AB, Sweden: http://www.iar.com
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@iar.se
Tel: +46 18 167800, Fax: +46 18 167838
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