Re: Associating stylesheets with documents

For those that haven't read my note on XML-DEV Grif has announced
that it will release Symposia Pro, our HTML/well-formed XML editor
with certain XML extensions including the use of CSS with XML at
the end of June.

At 07:14 PM 6/14/97 -0700, Jon Bosak wrote:
>The simple mechanism is easily described. A stylesheet is associated
>with an XML document by inserting into the prolog of the document a
>processing instruction of the form
>
>   <?XML-stylesheet type="text/dsssl" href="duckbook.dsl"?>
>1. An optional MEDIA attribute with the same semantics as the MEDIA
>attribute specified in WD-style.
>
>2. An optional TITLE attribute with the same semantics as the TITLE
>attribute specified in WD-style.
>
>3. A form <?XML-alt-stylesheet ... ?> with the same semantics as
>REL="alternate stylesheet" in WD-style.

We like this proposal and are considering implementing it
in the forthcoming release of Symposia.

>One question that certainly needs resolution is the implied meaning of
>multiple stylesheet PIs.  The corresponding structure in WD-style (a
>
>1. Make the appearance of more than one xml-stylesheet PI in a prolog
>an error.  (You could still have multiple xml-alt-stylesheet PIs.)
>
>2. Allow multiple xml-stylesheet PIs and cascade them if they are
>
>3. Allow multiple xml-stylesheet PIs but either
>(a) state that the various stylesheets should always be presented as
>user options, or
>(b) allow the treatment be completely system-dependent.

We very much like both cascading and merging behavior. So we'd opt
for 2 or 3b. If I understand 3a correctly is seems to complicate
things for the user and perhaps undermine the designer's control
of the presentation. Is the user supposed to understand the
relationship between the stylesheets? If 3a suggests that the option
should be available to the user but that there is still some
default system behavior we would be very amenable to that.
3b isn't very desirable; whatever is done should be done reliably 
in any system.  But anything goes is preferably to nothing allowed.

>Another question is what to specify as the behavior when multiple
>stylesheet PIs are given and they are of more than one type.  This
>could be decided by the system, the user, or some combination of the
>two.  For the near term, it would seem sufficient to state that the
>behavior is currently considered to be system-dependent and that we
>intend to sort this out later.

We are not sure we have a handle on the implications but we'd like
to ask if it is impossible to imagine retained cascading behavior 
irrespective of the type?  We do this already in a sense, cascading
CSS over our own stylesheet mechanism.

Michael Leventhal
______________________________________________________________________
  Michael Leventhal           Internet  : http://www.grif.fr
  G R I F , S. A.             Email     : Michael.Leventhal@grif.fr
  VP, Technology              Telephone : 510-444-2962
  1800 Lake Shore Ave Ste 14  Fax       : 510-444-1672
  Oakland, California  94606  France    : (011) 33 1 30121430 (fr US)
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
  Michael Leventhal           Internet  : http://www.grif.fr
  G R I F , S. A.             Email     : Michael.Leventhal@grif.fr
  VP, Technology              Telephone : 510-444-2962
  1800 Lake Shore Ave Ste 14  Fax       : 510-444-1672
  Oakland, California  94606  France    : (011) 33 1 30121430 (fr US)
______________________________________________________________________

Received on Wednesday, 18 June 1997 13:12:52 UTC