[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XSLT vs. CSS (Re: Indexing)
I agree that for the subset of XML files that are XHTML, better CSS is better XHTML. I concede the likelihood that more HTML is being produced than any other markup language. I would counter that separation of CSS formatting by annotation and XSLT transformation is a good thing. I don't see that lack of improvements in CSS can be blamed on the success of transformation. What I concede is that there are documents that look not so good because transformation to HTML is the only tool applied by some set of developers, and that improvements in CSS would improve the opportunity further. Confusion in which tools to apply is a training issue. Not improving tools themselves is a different issue. I don't know if it makes sense to claim that XSLT is at fault for the failure to improve CSS, or if the CSS users aren't able to influence vendors for other reasons (belief that it is good enough might be one). It seems to me that there is a competitive opportunity here. I don't consider XSLT a stylesheet. XSL-FO is a stylesheet. The semantics of style are conflated with transformation and that is a heritage issue from DSSSL. Spilt milk. I didn't like it then either. Hyperlinks were dragged into it too. It would be fun to wind back the clock and see if James et al would have done the work they did had they been told that transformation but not formatting objects were wanted. However, they separated these into XSLT and XSL-FO and that should be sufficient. Confusion of users may be epidemic and in some individual cases, political, but show me an application language without politics and I'll show you a dead language. I am told that X3D and SVG are different languages for different applications, but I'll bet my next paycheck that if X3D becomes more noticeable, the urge to make SVG-3D will go mainstream. It isn't necessary, but it is very human. My costs aren't going up per se but unless I don't bother to acquaint developers with both CSS and XSLT, my rendering quality is not optimum. XSLT is absolutely necessary. CSS is excellent to have. Better CSS would be more excellent. len From: Frank [mailto:frank@b...] On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 10:16, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > That would suggest that the problem today is not > technical or political, but a matter of education. > There simply are XML languages for which CSS is > not useful or available. There are applications > of CSS which are simpler and more elegant. Without > discrimination, one will stumble. But there is also one big application -- documents on the web, for which good CSS support would be a major improvement. While there is no _technical_ problem with using two stylesheets, it is a cost. Like Simon, I largely deal with documents that are basically human readable as created. Except for the TOC and indexes (and indexes tend to be replaced by links and searches anyway), they merely need to be prettyprinted. Without support for generated text and counters my clients have to have two stylesheets rather than one. I would bet that half the XSLT I deal with would go away with those two enhancements. Further, half the remainder would also go away: There's lots of other code in the applications that could transform (or create right the first time) the XML for CSS styling, if we didn't have to have the XSLT anyway. I accept that for most xml developers it's not a big problem. They seem to mostly be moving information between computers. For those applications which have a human at the beginning and the end, it's a pain in the neck and a pain in the wallet.
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