Re: W3C Core Styles

Todd Fahrner wrote:

> Thus spake Chris Lilley:
> [stylesheet to do lists | like | this ]
>
> Terrific. <troll>But Chris - why would anybody need to implement CSS2 when
> they can just auto-generate a string of GIFs and non-breaking spaces in a
> DIV from XML with a XSL transformation/template/stylesheet thingie. It'll
> even work in Netscape 3!

My reply is contained in the attached Commodore Amiga ham image file, which is
viewable in Netscape 2 with the appropriate plug-in (works on IBM AIX version only,
others coming soon).

> <plug>Like those of three of the four Core styles?</plug>.

Kinda

> > @media projection, tv, handheld {
> >   H2, H3, H4, H5, H5 {
> >     display: run-in
> >   }
> > }
>
> Yes, but what I really want to provide is paged screen mode, Chris.

I know, that's why I picked some paged screen mode media declarations.

> Do I
> have to put "best viewed on a Projector" to get this? Bah! - I thought a
> CRT was a projector anyway.

A CRT can be used to implement a projector and also used to implement a screen
depending on whether it scrolls or not and whether it is designed to be read from
twenty rows of seats away or not.

>  We just need a "display type" or "flow object", or whatever,
> that represents a series of screenfuls, bounded both above and below. BODY
> { display: viewportset } . The text would flow through, filling as many
> screens as the viewport's geometrical constraints and the available fonts'
> metrics would permit.

Sounds like the description of paged media in CSS2 to me

> Many of the properties now being relegated to the
> "print" and "projector" media types have a place on screen, I'm convinced -
> and not just a "projector" screen. You could have columns, and marginalia,
> and nav as "running headers" or footers. Mmmm.

Congratulations, you just invented @media hypercard {}

Todd, if you want to propose a new paged screen media type for CSS2 you know both
the means of doing so and the time which you have left to do it. See you in Provo
Utah?

> Aye. Favorite Eric Gill quotation: "Letters are things, not pictures of
> things." So are documents.

Lovely quote which I will shamelessly rip off and re-use


> >It is how the technology is applied that counts.
>
> Hearty agreement. I think that rich structure and semantics are wasted,
> however, to the extent that the style language cannot negotiate its
> presentation based on the very particular restraints of the rendering
> environment - tell me how much space I have (in a typographical unit system
> - not pixels), its aspect, the color depth, the metrics of the available
> fonts and whether or not they can be anti-aliased, and THEN I'll tell you
> whether and how to transform and stylize the various bits of content.

That sounds like a strong argument for tight coupling (in the DSSSL and XSL sense)
although of course you need pixels too,  or device resolution - possibly both dots
per inch and lines per inch.

6 point verdana is quite readable without antialiasing on a 3540dpi imagesetter.
12pt verdana which has been antialiased is unreadable on a 300dpi laser printer
which only has a 48lpi screen.

> A
> rendering environment query language and conditionalization mechanism
> should be part of the style language, IMO - HTTP can't go far enough, and
> it encourages server-side transformation and redundancy anyway.

Sounds like you want a DOM for the rendering environment.

--
Chris Lilley, W3C                             http://www.w3.org/
Graphics,Fonts,Stylesheets Guy    The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)492 387 987 <NEW    06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 1998 17:20:58 UTC