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Why separate content from layout
Exaggerated scenario
In ABC Company, a small group of person is working on a web project about information which is dynamic in its nature. At the beginning, everyone has the same responsibility and the same workflow. One must find, format, and put the information on the web. Soon later, they find their website looks like an abstract art gallery where some pages are colorful, some are black-and-white, and some have small fonts and other have big ones. The list of variation could go on and on. They are just too different.
So they hold a meeting and reach a concensus on the format. Everyone goes back to her pages and reformats them to follow the agreement. This really takes time. And it is not fun, I could tell you. For their job, they must know how to extract the information (understand what it is) and also how to create web page the way they want. Since both subjects are vastly different, it is difficult for one to command both well. Even though it turns out that some are more fluent in web subject than extracting information and vice versa, they finally could manage to clean up their web site and make it look more from earth not Mars. Until one day, a project manager comes and says "I really love your work. It is really great. But I think it will look even better if we change a bit. Let us make the Title of each page a bit bigger and I would like to change the color for each link." The loud roar fills up the meeting room with perceptible murmur of "Nooooo.. not again!!!"
Separate'em
Is it better if we can avoid this vicious cycle of reformatting every page? Is it better if those who perform well on the information do not have to worry about the layout? Is it better if another can concentrate on the layout without having to know about the meaning of the content? Just make it look good and let those who are interested to come and read it, not me!!!
"Oh.. Yesss" comes a louder roar.
Solution
Now, they divide their team into 2 groups. One is responsible only for the information. What they will send to the layout team will conceptually look like the following?
<title>New way to work with web information</title>
<body>
<paragraph>Now we have found a <emphasize>good</emphasize> way to work with web information.</paragraph>
</body>
<footnote>version 1</footnote>
They do not have to type exactly like that. Many softwares produce a similar file when you tell them so.
The other group is responsible for the layout. They may describe it as the following? It is just an example for you to see the concept.
<title> font size = big. color = red
<body> font size = normal. color = black
<emphasize> underline
<footnote>font size = very small. color = blue. center justify
One week later, the same manager comes and says "Oh.. Well.. I got a feedback from an important user that he does not want to see footnote and he hates us using underline for emphasis. Can we make it bold instead?
If it is the same situation, everyone must go through all their pages and delete the footnote and check all underline words to bold words. But it is different now, isn't it? Only one who is responsible for the layout has to work. And it is only one place that he has to change. It is the layout file which may now look like this.
<title> font size = big. color = red
<body> font size = normal. color = black
<emphasize> bold
<footnote> hidden
Now, when all content pass through the layout system, emphatic word will be shown in bold and footnote hidden as requested. Win-Win for all.
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