Embedded style and style wrappers (RE: New WD: CSS3 selectors)

I noticed that this question from over a month ago hasn't been
answered yet:

Jelks Cabaniss writes:

> Speaking of embedded, I assume there's no plan of using "embedding" (as we can
> do with HTML docs) CSS inside XML docs? ...

In principle, you can already do that with the processing instruction
(PI), if you use a fragment-ID as the URL:

    <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="#x12" ?>
    ...
    <STYLE ID="x12">
      STYLE { display: none }
      /* some more CSS here */
    </STYLE>
    ...

It is somewhat indirect, and the meaning of the STYLE element is
hidden inside a PI, but if all you want is a way to render the
document, this trick should work.

>                                              I am interested in the mechanism(s)
> hinted at in http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-stylesheet/ (see last paragraph) -- has
> there been discussion of some kind of "wrapper" file containing pointers to the
> markup URLs, the style sheet(s), script(s) (if any), etc.?   Then have browsers
> reference the wrapper instead of the markup directly -- that way, your markup is
> kept clean of stylesheet PIs, scripts, etc., and can be reused in other contexts
> ...

You're not the only one to suggest it. I've heard the same from some
W3C members as well (who presumably got it from their customers), so
there may well develop a working group in a couple of months. It
certainly seems like a good idea to me.

Suggestions range from MIME/multipart-variants, Java-jars, Manifest
files, SGML catalogs, to PGP armor (digital signing would be part of
it, too), and of course it would use XLink for pointing and RDF for
describing the relations. Or maybe not; we'll see.



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/INRIA
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 1999 13:32:40 UTC