RE: XHTML documents + XSL (or CSS) stylesheets

At 06:16 PM 7/18/00 -0700, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> Consider an XHML docment labeled as text/xml or application/xml.  If
>> this XML document has a linking PI to an XSLT stylesheet, what will
>> happen? 
>
>I think for the question to be useful, it is necessary to be explicit
>about the context -- what will happen when? When an email is received
>by a regular email client, labelled text/xml? By a web browser?

Hey!  I agree with Larry entirely here.  I think the context makes the
difference.  Older HTML browsers, for instance, might ignore the processing
instruction, but would probably be willing to process an entity body with
an <html> in it some place.

>>  Will the document be handled by the XSLT processor or XHTML
>> user agent?  In my understanding, the result is undefined.
>
>Is it bad that the result is undefined?

I'm not sure it is definable, at least given 'Associating XML documents
with Stylesheets'.  Given what seems to be a real transition from HTML to
XHTML at the W3C, that may not be a bad thing.

>> IE 5.0(1)
>> invokes the XSLT processors.    In the case of CSS, I believe that 
>> the XHTML user agent is invoked and it uses the CSS stylesheet 
>> for rendering.
>
>Is this OK?

It seems fine - perfectly coherent, anyway - to me.

Why not just add a warning in XHTML 1.1 that putting that PI at the front
of a document may generate unpredictable results depending on whether the
PI and XSLT are supported by any given environment?

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books

Received on Tuesday, 18 July 2000 21:26:16 UTC