Re: [css-document-class] defining basic style

On 5 February 2015 at 11:38, Sanja Bonic <sanja.bonic@univie.ac.at> wrote:
>>> >in LaTeX we have \documentclass{<classname>} to define the text's basic
>>> >look. Has there ever been any interest in or discussion about defining a
>>> >basic set of style names (like article, minimal, report, thesis, book,
>>> >slides, etc)?
>>> >
>>> >I'm thinking of something like this to be included in the HTML head:
>>> >
>>> ><style>
>>> >document-style {screen: book, paper: minimal, slides: presentation}
>>> ></style>
>>
>> That's basically something like
>>
>>    @import url("book") screen;
>>    @import url("minimal") print;
>>    @import url("slides") projection;
>
>
> Yes and no - importing still needs the boilerplate code that we could avoid
> if the browser renders the basic style without having to import anything.
>
>> There have been and are many efforts to create re-usable style sheets,
>> an early one is<http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/>, similarily some
>> browsers come with pre-defined style sheets, e.g. Opera "Classic" lets
>> users choose specialised style sheets for high contrast and similar
>> things. There are probably mountains of "WordPress themes".
>
>
> WordPress is not what I was aiming at. And one browser having its own
> specialised stylesheets is good, but it's not a standard and it doesn't help
> the user when they would like to apply a certain style without relying on a
> CMS or the usage of one browser.
>
> I was thinking of a standardized set of guidelines for browsers so that a
> document looks like a basic set of styles and the browsers themselves would
> implement this. So, a normal user does not have to think of cross-browser
> compatibility when they just want to write an article and maybe print them
> later on in a different format. For these purposes, usually LaTeX is used
> together with a basic document class, but only people who already have some
> more advanced IT knowledge use LaTeX and the others are stuck with Word and
> its alternatives.
>
> The core stylesheets you linked are a really early approach, as you said,
> and would need some editing to adapt them to HTML 5. Also, I was thinking of
> something much simpler where the user doesn't have to think and learn so
> much. Why not File -> New Document in every browser that lets you create a
> standard document and then apply a style to it? Could be more of WYSIWYG
> where you just have textboxes that automatically get converted to h1,
> article, and other "correct" tags that are then styled by the browser using
> our style guidelines. The user can then save the HTML that was created and
> add css as and if needed.
>
> This was just an implementation example. For the mailing list, my suggestion
> is:
>
> 1. make available a tag for document class in HTML, similar to LaTeX
> 2. have a set of style guideline standards including recommended HTML tags,
> so that the browser devs know how to implement them - ensuring that a
> certain style always looks the same, without the user having to use
> third-party libraries or learn CSS just to make a two-column article
> 3. for backwards compatibility, {all: minimal} is the default and does not
> need to be specified - it is the basic styling of an HTML page as we know it
> now
>
> All the best,
> Sanja
>

Received on Thursday, 5 February 2015 11:58:11 UTC