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[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: CSS and XSL
 Hi Jelf, <YourComment> My rhetorical question was sort of tongue-in-cheek. :) There were good reasons for the "schizoid" nature of *ML+CSS. I question whether reversion to an "improved", well-formed Tag Soup is progress. </YourComment> <Reply> Sure there where good reason for having two different syntax. These two things evolved differently. However, it remains that all the discourse we have about XML as a _common_ _document_ syntax_ could also be applied to style languages. In fact, when you look closely at how CSS is structured, you can see all the property set concept percolating thru. Also, I you look closely at the DOM2 specs you'll notice that the underlying model is a hierarchy of objects with property sets attached to each type of object. We can question that DOM didn't used a composite pattern API but, it remains that the object/property set is there. Also, we created XML to simplify SGML. In the same vein your example just show a good simplification if we consider that a HTML object could have several properties or to be more conceptual that each HTML object has a property set that could be set with a _unique_ and _consistent_ syntax. So your tongue in cheek wasn't so foolish after all. Now, let's take a look through the eyes of somebody having to implement this stuff (And I have to do it each day :-) The style property value contains a property set that has to be parsed and each attribute/value pair attributed to the underlying model property set. For instance, the body object is in fact a formatting object container (abstract container or aggregator). This object contains other objects. The parser then creates a body object and will set this object property set with values extracted from HTML/XML (the latter for voyager) properties. One property is an exception, this is the style property which act as a container for an other property set. Thus, the parser has to change parsing rules and extract attributes/values from the style string and set the Body object property set (the container object)with them. We have here two syntax one being embedded in the other. I do not say we scrap today CSS syntax contained in the HTML/XML property (we have million of browsers out there that would reduce our fervour) but, it would be more easier to have a single syntax that would explicitly show the relationship between the object and its property set. Thus to retake your example: <BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000EE" VLINK="#551A8B" BACKGROUND="bg.gif" TOPMARGIN="0" LEFTMARGIN="0"> express explicitly in a single syntax the relationship between the body object and its property set. It is expressing it better than with the following expressing where one syntax is embedded into an other. <BODY style="BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF;...etc..." >. Of course, we have to deal with the legacy, but the work we are doing with XSL and XML is a good occasion to move toward a more simpler, concise and consistent model than we have today. XML gives us, after all, a good opportunity to unify into a coherent and simple syntax different element of a document facets or as a language used to convey the document objects/property set hierarchy. IN the short term we have to do some retrofit like, for instance, the style property. For the mid and long term find a more choherent solution. </Reply> Regards Didier PH Martin mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.netfolder.com XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list 
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