PhD thesis on style sheets

I'll be defending my PhD thesis [1] at the University of Oslo today
and tomorrow [2]. Although the title is "Cascacing Style Sheet", the
thesis is also a study of many other style sheet languages and
proposals. Here is the abstract:

  The topic of this thesis is style sheet languages for structured
  documents on the web. Due to characteristics of the web -- including
  a screen-centric publishing model, a multitude of output devices,
  uncertain delivery, strong user preferences, and the possibility for
  later binding between content and style -- the hypothesis is that
  the web calls for different style sheet languages than does
  traditional electronic publishing.

  Style sheet languages that were developed and used prior to the web
  are analyzed and compared with style sheet proposals for the web
  between 1993-1996. The dissertation describes the design of a
  web-centric style sheet language known as Cascading Style Sheets
  (CSS). CSS has several notable features including: cascading,
  pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements, forward-compatible parsing
  rules, support for different media types, and a strong emphasis on
  selectors. Problems in CSS are analyzed, and recommended future
  research is described.

CSS, as well as this thesis, would not have happened without a strong
community for discussion and support. I'm grateful to all participants
on the www-style, www-talk, and www-html mailing lists. I hope that
the thesis will be a valuable contribution to the study of style
sheets. As Philip M Marden and Ethan V Munson noted in 1999:

  Style sheet languages are terribly underresearched. 

[1] http://people.opera.com/howcome/2006/phd
[2] http://www.matnat.uio.no/tavle/disputas/2006/2006-0013.xml

Cheers,

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Thursday, 16 February 2006 08:17:12 UTC