> The document and the style depend on eachother.

I’d previously understood the relationship to be that the document could remain unchanged, whilst the style (including visual structure/layout) changed. The simplest canonical example is that you can change the font, and all the words and meaning remain unchanged.

> You see this with localization. You might need to change spacing or padding or breakpoints to accomodate different languages (text being different length in different languages).

This is a really intereting case. Strictly I’d say it was a different document, if the language has changed. Really good translations change idiom, which can change meaning, and words, at the level of ohraes, although the intent would be preserved.

But I’m nit-picking, being contrarian, or exploring the edges of your comment.

Today, many web documents are app GUIs. Each field is essentially the same “thing” regardless the languge of its label. And in that sense, these are the same document, and your point holds.

I still think that if you can keep the markup as minimal as possible (reduce the div nesting to just what’s require to mark up logical sections of the content), then you could make a good stab at Zen-gardening your design. It’s very hard to do, however.