Abstract: | This paper describes our approach to the problem of specifying formatting information in computer-based text processing. We distinguish between local and global formatting decisions, adopt natural conventions for representing each, and separate them. Our system, cast as a preprocessor to an available formatter, hides annoying formatter dependencies, and leads to a document representation which can be processed under several operating systems. After initially implementing our system, we produced a second version for another formatter/operating system in less than 2 man-weeks. |