Re: CSS in XML format ?

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:30:17 +0100, you wrote:

>Patrick Andries wrote:
> > Unfortunately, the CSS syntax is very hard (to use a euphemism) to
> > interpret with XSLT.

>XSLT sucks. (That's just my personal opinion.)

True; XSLT shares only one admirable aspect with DSSSL, it's a "Turing
Complete" programming language, but from there it grows into practically
not usable.

For the rest of what may be needed to do with structurally marked up
content, rely on a parser to build a parse tree and then let separately
programmed applications written in a more practical language take care
of that parse tree as required. There are a lot of those languages, as
well as prebuilt libraries, around.

> > Is there an initiative to have CSS use XML syntax?

>CSS is not a tree-like language, XML is not suitable for representing
>the content of CSS.

CSS is a "non procedural, descriptive only" language, it shall stay that
way of course (advocating this to the current CSS WG, if it helps).

>Please try to get away from the idea that everything must be written
>in XML. XML is only useful for a limited subset of the document types
>out there, namely linear tree-based structures.

It's about understanding to use the right tool for the job at hand, the
"bandwagon" fools a lot of people to think in opposite ways.

Thanks for the input...

-- 
Rex

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2002 19:51:24 UTC