CSS in XML Documents

I am working with some XML documents which are currently using CSS2 
syntax to encode the style elements of the documents. These documents 
are being transformed to other formats on the fly by Apache Cocoon2. The 
CSS2 syntax (in <style/> elements, <link/>'ed in, and inline) is fine 
when I'm transforming to HTML or some other format that handles CSS2 
directly, but it breaks with anything else (e.g. XSL-FO). So, I came up 
with a scheme for encoding CSS2 information in XML. I call it XCSS. I 
haven't put together a DTD or XML Schema yet, but suffice it to say that 
you can represent any valid CSS2 stylesheet with XCSS (either in a 
seperate file or inside a <style type="text/xcss"/> element, I don't 
forsee it being useful for inline style information, for obvious 
reasons). So far this is working great. I've almost finished the XSLT 
stylesheet to transform XCSS into CSS2, and soon I will write one that 
transforms it into XSL-FO formatting instructions. (On a side note, if 
the gal/guy that made XSL-FO use CSS2 names for almost everything reads 
this list, I'd just like to say, "Thank you! That makes this project 
*so* much easier!") So, is there a better way to do what I'm doing 
already out there? I can't seem to find one, and it seems that others 
could benefit from something like XCSS. If I'm on to something, let me 
know and I'll post more details.

Wes Morgan
wmorga13@calvin.edu
Web Programmer - www.ccel.org

Received on Thursday, 19 July 2001 11:38:34 UTC