Re: escaping escaping

On Tue, 03 Dec 2002 16:57:06 +0000, Philip TAYLOR [PC87S/O-XP] 
<P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk> wrote:

> Wingnut wrote:
>>
>> Hello!  Can we chew on the possibility of using CSS's...
>>
>> style='display: escaped;'
>>
>> ... where a styled-as-such elements' contents would hit the browser
>> escaped (not rendered), as in HTML source text?  I probably have my
>> terms screwed up, but you understand. :) I am looking for a
>> container-tag or method to display html source without manually or
>> dynamically escaping the lt's, gt's, quotes, amps, etc... during
>> authoring.  display: escaped; sounded rather interesting so I thought
>> I'd throw it to the wolves for consumption. :)  I'm still looking-into
>> SOURCE, CODE, PRE, SAMP, etc.  All comments welcome.  If
>> topic-wandering, email directly to me as wanted.
>
> I don't think this is feasible, although I accept that
> the effect is highly desirable : you are asking CSS
> to affect the interpretation of the /semantics/ of
> an *ML document, whereas (AFAIK) CSS is restricted
> to affecting the /appearance/ of such documents.

For a constrained set like (X)HTML where the valid elements and attributes 
are known in advance, it is possible to accomplish this effect using CSS. 
The Showstructure.css file provided as an alternate user stylesheet in 
Opera 7.0 browsers demonstrates a way to do this.

A generic solution that would work with any well-formed XML file is 
probably not possible. A script could be written to parse XML files 
accompanied by appropriate schema or DTDs that would generate a basic CSS 
file to accomplish something similar.

-- 
James Card

Received on Tuesday, 3 December 2002 15:17:36 UTC