Re: styling xml with css - copying xml attribute values into CSS attribute values

Hi, Laurens.
   
  CSS should let custom tagsets have the same or more expressive graphical semantics than XHTML has now. Those semantics will make many webpages MORE meaningful to people and machines, and make writing webpages doable for people without XHTML knowledge (so long as a CSS stylesheet is lurking somewhere). DTD's or schemas can be included to make sure that the display is created properly, once major browsers can validate XML. 
   
  You wrote: "[if] you want to publish ... on the internet ... a custom format is not the way to go, ... you're not adhering to any standard. For example, if you use <breadcrumb 
myurl="./webpage.htm">webpage</breadcrumb> then Google won't recognised it as a link..."
   
    At some point, maybe W3C HTML standards will differ from custom tagsets only because CSS properties are automatically associated with W3C tagsets by browsers according to W3C mandated defaults, while custom tagsets require explicit CSS to give the tagsets semantics.  Search engine companies like Google will complain and then adapt. They might start processing CSS attached to pages, looking for things like url assignments to tags written onto xml webpages.  It might be easier  for that transition if CSS had XML syntax, like XHTML, SVG, XLINK, XFORMS,....
   
  You wrote:

   
  "So your "all CSS pages require it anyway" statement isn't true. Page authors won't style a h1 as a list item or anything else (well, with the odd exception), a h1 is a level-one heading no matter what styling is applied to it."
   
  Once a url taken from CSS-formatted XML can be assigned inside a selector, then your example of html headings seems like one of the last few things left. So how about adding "heading-one" to the display attribute's possible settings? 
   
  You wrote:
   
  "The only thing you want to do is to move your custom information from a class attribute into an element name, from what I can tell only for aesthetic reasons."
   
  XML can help me design a display of content. CSS tells the browser about the display that the XML specifies. For XML specific to a display design, using XML+CSS saves me from using XML+XSLT+XHTML+CSS. That is not an aesthetic reason, but the XML+CSS solution is elegant. 
   
  The CSS is sufficient to separate the content I mark-up from it's display in a browser. Anyone who uses XML office document formats would probably agree, but those people are too busy using office applications instead of web browsers.
   
  Thanks, Laurens, for your help and interest. I got the information I needed. 
   
  -Noah

			
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