Re: CSS and SGML document formatting -Reply

I suspect CSS and DSSSL can and will continue to live in parallel
>indefinitely.  CSS is probably pretty close to adequate for the kinds of
>simple styling that *users* want to do to ocntrol display of information
>in their browser.  I think the learning curve is too steep for DSSSL to
>be practical for that purpose (I think that in part because I haven't
>been able to convince myself to start climbing it, yet, and I *like*
>being tool-literate).  Meybe it just requires better presentation than
>I've seen, yet, but essential complexity is part of the problem, too.

I think you may be right. What concerns me is that with all the hype
surrounding the WWW, DSSSL may be given the back seat to CSS, when it
clearly does not deserve to be (they are chalk and cheese, or perhaps
chalk and granite). The folk who are pursuing CSS make this worse by
pretending that they can scale to full SGML, which is a blatant lie.

I have no problem with CSS being targetted to HTML/low quality
publishing. It's fine for that, and I can only encourage people to
start actually using it as an introduction to stylesheets. Anything
beyond that is clearly beyond it's realm though.

As always on the Internet. I am responsible for my own opinions.

Received on Thursday, 25 April 1996 11:53:21 UTC