Re: [166] Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets

On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 11:55 AM, Joe Clark wrote:
>> A XAG-compliant XML format has a default stylesheet (as does XHTML). 
>> Perhaps what we mean is that the default styling, for any medium, 
>> should be sufficient to "read" the content - rather than saying this 
>> only applies to HTML, which as Joe pointed out is very different to 
>> XML in regards to stylesheets.
>
> Anyone care to explain that, using as few acronyms as possible?

The guidelines for creating an accessible markup language specify that
created languages should have a default style sheet.  HTML is an 
example;
when we say "can be read without style sheets", we really mean that
they can be read with the default style sheet, such as the one included
in the HTML 4.01 specification.  (It's also incorporated into XHTML's
definition, therefore.)

For example, "without styling" would mean that strong text wouldn't
show up as bold in a visual browser.  It would mean that headings and
text would flow together and be indistinguishable.

So obviously the requirement "without styles" is broken, because all
use of HTML or XHTML requires that some style sheet be applied -- even
if it is the default style sheet of the browser, which parallels that of
the HTML 4.01 default style sheet.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                     http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain                http://idyllmtn.com
Author, CSS in 24 Hours                       http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog                      http://blog.kynn.com/iae
Shock & Awe Blog                           http://blog.kynn.com/shock

Received on Friday, 20 June 2003 15:31:59 UTC