Re: DSSSL style editing (was: RE: Positioning...)

[Mike Wexler:]

| >I think you're wrong here, dead wrong. I think the WWW succeeded
| >because it was free, easy to enter, and cool, and many new players
| >enter for exactly those reasons.
| 
| Easy to enter is exactly my point. People could take an existing page,
| make a few changes, post it, and they are now publishing to the world.

It should be noted that this level of "editing" is easy to do with a
properly designed DSSSL stylesheet.  My HTML 3.2 stylesheet can be
made to produce very different typographical treatments just by
changing the value of a few of the parameters.  The ease of doing this
is one of the reasons why I don't feel any urgent need for DSSSL style
editors (though most people seem to disagree with me on this).

It is much easier to change an existing stylesheet than it is to
design one from scratch.  I think that modifying a stylesheet will be
much more common than designing one, and if the stylesheet has been
parameterized well, you don't have to understand the stylesheet
language to do this.

| By the way are there any good books on DSSSL yet?

Alas, no.  The relatively few people involved with DSSSL are doing it
because it's the right thing to do, not because they expect to make
big money by selling more Web browsers than the other guy; that's why
there are relatively few of them.  Most of the people qualified to
write a book on DSSSL are either overloaded with other projects or are
spending their time on public implementations instead.

Jon

Received on Thursday, 6 February 1997 18:43:17 UTC