Re: An alternative strategy

Scott E. Preece writes:
>   From: bosak@atlantic-83.eng.sun.com (Jon Bosak)
> 	
> | I agree that it would be useful to have a dsssl-o version of the
> } default HTML 2.0 stylesheet at the back of the CSS1 spec.  While no
> | such thing exists at present, I did some rooting around and came up
> | with something similar that was written, I believe, by James Clark a
> } year or so ago. ...
> 
> ---
> 
> An interesting hint of what it can do.  I like the style (LISP is still
> my favorite language).  I like the natural way it supports, for
> instance, arithmetic on indentations and sizes.
> 
> I'm a little curious whether it supports anything like the context
> selectors in CSS1 (does that "(element (ul li)..." mean an li inside
> a ul?).  Is the context stacck exposed to the code in the element
> descriptions (can you treat it like an a-list or like the environment in
> a closure)?
> 
> What makes me really nervous about this notation is whether it implies
> more than it delivers.  Is it really Scheme or does it just use the
> notation and allow a few of the operations in specific places?

  Its fairly complete... its no CL though.

> Of course, the more pressing question is whether anybody is going to
> implement it in a common-use browser...

  Emacs-W3 will be DSSSL(-o) compliant before too much longer.  I'd say by
the end of the year, sooner perhaps.  Emacs-W3 isn't exactly common-use,
but does have a reasonably large user base.

-Bill P.

Received on Monday, 6 May 1996 09:43:42 UTC