Article:		ComicsML: A Simple Markup Language for Comics
Subject:		finessing the hard part - comics = sequence = layout
Date:		2001-04-20 09:27:20
From:		David vun Kannon
OK, Jason beat me to it! I've been thinking about a "DTD for comics" for a long time. My attempts have been similar to ComicsML as described here. I think the ingredients of a successful comics markup are: text markup - leverage XTHML modules visual markup - leverage SVG layout markup - leverage SMIL or XSL-FO What's left to innovate? Putting it all together and sprinkling it with some metadata. As my subject line shows, I do think the deep issue for comics qua comics is sequence and panel layout. So as important as intra-panel markup is, the real meat of capturing the "meaning" of comics in XML relates to sequence of panels, aka layout.

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• finessing the hard part - comics = sequence = layout
  2001-04-23 19:10:48 Jason McIntosh
  
  ComicsML as it stands does sequence, with panels appearing in the sequence the creator intends the reader to read them, but it doesn't handle any sort of layout beyond this implied linearity yet. Determining how and how much ComicsML will handle layout will be an interesting puzzle.

  
  Personally, I predict it will end up working hand-in-hand with other grammars (you already mentioned SVG) if someone actually wants to use a ComicsML to render a comic from scratch. We'll see what happens!