RE: ACTION-982: style sheets

> Surely a prohibition on transforming
> style sheets is only relevant if
> the content that they refer to has not itself been
> transformed? Given
> caching considerations etc. how can one assess whether this
> is the case
> or not?

Actually, the decision to transform and the 
mode of transformation of style sheets and 
markup documents are different. Markup and CSS
are structured differently, so one cannot
conflate decisions to transform them.

A couple of examples:

a) HTML markup, with several style sheet links
each corresponding to different media types
(i.e. alternative external style sheets);
the markup might be transformed to mobile,
but that style sheet marked "handheld" will
not.

b) Several different markup documents, for
mobile and desktop, each pointing to the same
style sheet; the CSS file relies upon @media
to encapsulate rules relevant for each media 
type. The variant markup for handheld is not
altered (need not be), whereas the style
sheet might be purged of its non-handheld
specific rules -- but the handheld-specific
rules are preserved.

c) Both markup and style sheet are for mobile,
but each in different character encodings.
Depending on the terminal capabilities, one,
or the other, or both might be re-encoded.

The essential point is that what is valid for
markup is also valid for CSS: if the markup is
unambiguously for mobile, by convention do
not touch it (except if absolutely necessary
and meaningful); similarly, if the CSS is
unambiguously for mobile, by convention do not
touch it (except if absolutely necessary and
meaningful).


E.Casais


      

Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 12:00:07 UTC