A better word processor?

Does anyone know whether there are any Mac (or other) word processors
that use (x)html as a document format, and CSS for styles?

I've been thinking about this for a while. Most word processors store
their styles internally, within the document itself - in fact with the
exception of Mellel I can't think of one that doesn't. What this means
is that styles become orphaned within their documents, so once you
have created a document it may take on some predefined styles, but
they instantly detach from the template. So, if you change to a
different corporate style (for example) later on, you have to revisit
all of your documents. More important, you can't easily separate
structure from presentation, which means that you can't easily
repurpose content for different uses. Meanwhile, in the world of
websites, there has been a minor revolution in this area - I don't
know of a web designer who isn't writing to web standards nowadays.
The value of separating structure and presentation is well understood.

So why hasn't the same thing happened with normal document production?
In principle (x)html and css is an ideal combination for managing
regular documents as well as web pages. Apparently CSS3 will have much
better typographical and image management than current standards, but
even now you can create quite impressive text and graphical layouts.
And by using css for print, display and different devices you can
eaily re-purpose a document for different renditions.

Of course, maybe it has already happened and I just missed it - if so,
maybe some kind soul will take pity on my senility and point me to it.
BTW I know about FrameMaker - that uses xml and xslt, but it is really
a high end document publishing system (with a price tag to match) -
from what I read it is still fundamentally based on a proprietary
format with xml output options.


Ian.

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