OT: Web Page Section Mark Up Comments VS xml

[Sannyasin Sivakatirswami]

This is a web page mark up development strategy question, where 
Revolution is a key app for RAD tools for work flow.

  I'm involved in repurposing print matter for the web and also a slow 
conversion of table based pages to CSS.

I find myself a little perplexed with regard to section mark up of web 
pages. I see two styles in use:

Old:

1) comments are used with "start" or "end" appended or pre-pended to 
either a single word string or sometimes multi-word string

<!-- header_nav start -->
      <img src="../../books/images/book_nav_bar.jpg" width="580" 
height="38" border="0" alt="Navigation Bar" usemap="#book_nav_bar_map" 
/>
<!-- header_nav end -->

or

<!-- start header navigation -->
      <img src="../../books/images/book_nav_bar.jpg" width="580" 
height="38" border="0" alt="Navigation Bar" usemap="#book_nav_bar_map" 
/>
<!-- end header navigation -->

this strategy has been around for years....

2) more recently, viewing something generated by inDesign's new 
"Package for GoLive"

[Horrifically inefficient work flow and code bloat... I can't even 
visualize where any one would actually use this in real life though I 
suppose if they invested so much in the creation of that work flow it 
must work somewhere, for someone... perhaps in a daily news site with 
dynamically generated pages requiring frequent updates, it could 
help...but for repurposing print matter to an already defined 
template... forget it.]

but it introduces the interesting use of proprietary xml mark up like:

<csobj 
csref="../web-data/InDesignPackages/SMNewsletterPackage/story_178.incd" 
h="454" occur="88" t="Component" w="392" g="incopy_default" s="">
<p class="Newslettertext">This month many etc etc.</p>
</csobj>

Now I am wondering if the use of comments to mark up web pages blocks 
that might be parsed, replaced dynamicaly later
(= use of offset functions in Revolution)

is now better replaced with custom XML mark up
(=use Revolution's xml library to parse and manipulate web page content 
on the fly or for global changes)

e.g.
<hap-topNav>
<div class="sitewideNav">
block of buttons here..
</div>
</hap-topNav>

of course, where classes are unique ID's one could parse the xhtml, css 
mark up itself, but this is often not the case, and one i want to 
delimit entire sections that are not <div>'s as such.

In insights from actual experience appreciated.

Sannyasin Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
katir at hindu.org

www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
www.HinduismToday.com
www.Gurudeva.org
www.Hindu.org