Re: CSS in XML format ?

Reading the discussions on this subject, I am wondering why it is
obviously considered a bad idea to create an XML DTD or XML Schema
describing CSS and have it attached to the CSS specification as a
recommended practice in a non-normative way?

This is a real question, not a rhetorical one, because at first thought
I'd consider it a good idea to create a representational 'interface' for
XML processing systems for exchanging, storing and processing CSS
stylesheets (e.g. merging styles along with merging XML document
fragments from different documents) in the XML domain. I'm not
questioning the current syntax for CSS - it should remain intact, just
amended by an XML representation to choose from.

On the comparison with XSL(T): XSLT is way more unaccessable to automatic
generation using a graphical UA than CSS is. I for one would love a more
human-readable syntax for XSLT not based on XML for manual writing,
similar to CSS.

The way I see it:

easy on humans                       easy on machines
-----------------------------------------------------
CSS         <- defined transformation -> CSS-X??
TrafoLang?? <- defined transformation -> XSL(T)

Unfortunately for both, the "defined transformation" and the counterparts
('??') are missing to date. In neither case, the concept would get
touched - only the representation for the sake of exchangeable tools.
When I understood Patrick right, he was asking for 'CSS-X'.


Regards, Christian.

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2002 12:49:33 UTC