Re: From CSS to DSSSL

Paul Prescod <papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> writes:

> Ian Graham wrote:
> > DSSSL is far more powerful than CSS, but is simply too powerful
> > (and complicated) for the majority of people creating Web pages.
> 
> I do not believe this to be true, and no amount of repetition will make
> it true. Let us presume that we are starting with a blank slate DTD.
> Let's say HTML, but the browser has no implicit stylesheet. If it helps,
> imagine it as HTML with the letter Q added to the front of every element
> so that the browser does not recognize it is HTML. Now what does the CSS
> stylesheet look like? What does the DSSSL stylesheet look like? Which is
> harder?
>
> If anyone agrees to write the CSS stylesheet, I'll write the DSSSL
> stylesheet and we'll see which really is harder. I'll even let you skip
> hard things like tables, hyperlinks and forms. We'll just talk about
> formatting for a simple subset of HTML -- either of us could write the
> DTD.
> 
> I don't know enough CSS and don't have the time right now to write both.
> I'm really curious about this, and I'll admit if I'm wrong. It should be
> obvious which is easier by looking at the code. I'll post the two to my
> website along with my DSSSL tutorial. It will serve as an excellent
> tutorial for CSS-heads in DSSSL and DSSSL-heads in CSS.

  Emacs/W3 uses a default stylesheet to specify almost _everything_ about
formatting.  Notable exceptions are table formatting, images, and
hyperlinks.  You might want to start from 'default.css' from Emacs/W3.  Its 
about 300 lines, but includes @media sections for use with speech,
ansi-tty's, tty's, and monochrome displays.  I haven't added in the
specifics for printing yet, but that should happen very shortly.

  I can mail it to you if you'd like.  Let me know.

-Bill P.

Received on Thursday, 17 April 1997 17:10:58 UTC