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In writing this book, I used two kinds of style notation. Most of the styling is done using Microsoft Word’s built-in style tools and a style sheet provided by MIS:Press. Some of the information, like Notes, Output, Warnings, and Sidebars, uses markup notation very similar to XML. Notes, for instance, started with <NOTE> and ended with </NOTE>. Although these solutions work reasonably well, there are many ways they could improve. XML addresses most of those needs, simplifying the style sheet structure and opening up new media to this document at the same time.
The styles defined in Word are a combination of structural information and formatting information, as shown in Table 6.1.
| Style | Usage | |
|---|---|---|
| TOC0 CT | Chapter number and title. This text will be used in table of contents when generated. | |
| TOC1 A | A head—the top level of headings in a chapter. This text will be used in table of contents when generated. | |
| TOC2 B | B head—the level of headings under A heads. This text also appears in table of contents. | |
| C | C head—level below B. Not in table of contents. | |
| D | D head—level below C. Not in table of contents. | |
| E | E head—level below D. Not in table of contents. | |
| BT | Body text—first paragraph of text after a header, icon, list, figure caption, or other free-standing graphic. Not indented. | |
| BT INDENT | Body text following a BT element. Indented. | |
| BL/NL1 TOP | Bulleted or numbered list—top line. (Formatted with extra space above.) | |
| BL/NL2 MID | Bulleted or numbered list—middle lines. (Formatted with no extra space above or below.) | |
| BL/NL3 BOT | Bulleted or numbered list—bottom line. (Formatted with extra space below.) | |
| GL | Glossary text—word defined should be in bold, definition in normal text. | |
| CC1 TOP | First line of multiline code listing. Formatted with extra space above. | |
| CC2 MID | Middle lines of multiline code listing. No extra space above or below. | |
| CC3 BOT | Last line of multiline code listing. Formatted with extra space below. | |
| CC4 SINGLE | Single line of multiline code listing. Formatted with extra space above and below. | |
| ICON | Icon text—used in combination with markup (<NOTE>, <WARNING>, etc.) to identify text that needs to be called out from body text. | |
| FG | Figure caption—Figure chapterNum.FigureNum should be in bold, rest of text plain. | |
| LC | Listing caption—goes above code listing. | |
| TBC | Table caption—goes above table. | |
| TBH | Table heads—use above each column. | |
| TB | Table body. | |
| UL | Unnumbered list. | |
| SN | Source notes—footnotes or notes at bottom of table. |
The structures defined with markup are mostly icons and bullets. Bullets are entered as <b> on PCs to avoid collisions between operating systems. Note icons are indicated as <NOTE>. A few structures are indicated with simple formatting. Keystrokes and menu items are supposed to be in bold, and titles are in italic.
Even though the current model has worked well for MIS:Press over the years, we may be able to indicate document structures more easily and more clearly in XML. Unless they begin to use XML-enabled publishing tools, this effort won’t do much for them, but it may shed some light on how to restructure formatting styles into structural styles. Structural styles can escape from some of the redundancy that is required to make formatting styles work and make converting this document from format to format easier.
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