Re: CSS and SGML document formatting -Reply

On Mon, 22 Apr 1996 16:12:27 +0200, you wrote:

>I don't have a response to your particular question about <BR>, but I do
>have a comment regarding your general question. There is considerable
>concern among _some_ representatives to this meeting that CSS as
>currently specified cannot be scaled appropriately to address general
>SGML documents with arbitrary DTDs. _Some_ members believe that
>DSSSL and, in particular, DSSSL-O (DSSSL online) provide a more
>robust and scalable style sheet solution for SGML documents with
>arbitary DTDs. Currently CSS appears to be designed for the HTML DTD,
>and many observers have assessed CSS to be "good enough" for HTML.

IMO, wether CSS is good enough for general SGML usage cannot be
decided by a committee. If CSS is extended to support arbitrary DTDs
and people who are using CSS style sheets for their HTML documents
start using CSS for SGML formatting and do not start using DSSSL-O,
then the users will have decided.

For me "extended CSS" may be good enough to specify formatting for
conversion of SGML to
- RTF
- WinHelp RTF
- paginated formatted line printer output (like nroff)
- text display output
- TeX
and similar formats. And I do not think that very much has to be done.
But I may be wrong.

The first thing to do is to enable CSS to express everything necessary
to process HTML documents without knowing anything about HTML.

>As a practical solution for HTML, CSS appears to have generated more
>industrial interest than DSSSL-O at the moment.
>

I was tempted to implement CSS1, I was not tempted to impliment DSSSL.
I was rather intimidated by DSSSL :-) And it is hard to pronounce,
too.

Regards

Wolfgang Rieger
Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung           Email: rieger@bse.de
                                          WWW  : http://www.bse.de/
Rosenheimer Str. 214                      Phone: +49 89 497738	
81669 Munich, Germany                     Fax  : +49 89 497738

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 1996 19:50:59 UTC