In HTML, over the last decade or so, there has been a strong push toward complete separation of content structure and style. Most websites are now built using HTML for structural mark-up, and CSS for presentation of that markup. This makes it really easy to apply different styles over the same content: If you aren't aware of how powerful this is, see for instance <http://www.csszengarden.com/>. There is a W3c document making the case for [separation of semantic and presentational markup](http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/contentPresentation-26.html).

I'm relatively new to LaTeX, but I have been designing websites for a while. Yes, they're different fields, but they're trying to do the same thing: present content well. My experience with LaTeX over the last 6 months leaves me feeling that this concept of separation of content and style hasn't worked it's way into the TeX world very far. For instance, to define the wrapping rules of a table cell in HTML+CSS is as simple as adding a class to the cell, and adding one line to your CSS document. In LaTeX, you need to do [something horrible like this](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2441/how-to-add-a-forced-line-break-inside-a-table-cell).

So, am I missing something, or is LaTeX? Is this concept of separation of content and style used in the design of LaTeX? Is it just poorly implemented? Is it likely to be implemented better in future versions (LaTeX3? ConTeXt?)?

*Note: I mean no offence to LaTeX devs: the system is really nice for many other reasons. I just see this gaping hole, and little discussion around it, and I am wondering why.*