Technical Report No. 43, January 1992 - Abstract

Anne Brüggemann-Klein, Derick Wood:
Electronic Style Sheets

Document processing systems must provide formatted versions of documents, where the specification of formats is the task of the document designer. To match the stylistic quality expected in the traditional publishing process, electronic style sheets need to support the design mechanisms that have evolved over the centuries. The designer's craft should not depend on the formatter, in particular it should not involve programming the formatter.

We propose four basic mechanisms called transcription types that are sufficient to express a wide range of layouts. Building on these four transcription types, we have defined a layout specification language, Designer, that is declarative and formatter-independent.