Re: CSS and XSL

I don't think that there is any value in changing venue this late in the
thread. You seemed to misunderstand my proposal so hopefully we can come
to agreement once you understand it. Also, as a practical matter I expect
the readers of XSL-list to have more of an interest in applying style to
XML than the readers of "www-style".

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> 
> Well, actually if I wanted to hard-code, or default particular CSS
> properties, I'd do it in an external sheet - that's what they're for, and
> that's why it's called 'cascading'.  

We're talking about the situation where someone wants *inline style*.

> Constrain?  Unless I was the
> over-zealous corporate designer who wants to force everyone into a
> particular letterhead, I probably wouldn't want to do that.

Or maybe you are trying to comply with federal laws, the violation of
which are cause for shutting down your corporation. Or maybe you just need
a B element that consistently generates bold. There are terabytes on top
of terabytes of data in the world where the only thing you can say about
an element is that it should be bold.

If inline CSS style makes sense then #FIXing or defaulting it makes just
as much sense.

> I could, of course, define style with a #FIXED value, if I really wanted,
> but why?

As it is, you can define style with a #FIXED value, but that fixes *all*
of the style values at once. If you don't comply with XML conventions
XML's features (like #FIXED) don't "work right."

> Making CSS style sheets use an XML vocabulary is fine with me.  Making
> every application that allows a local override of those styles declare an
> enormous mess of attributes to represent every possible property seems like
> a giant waste of time, processing, and energy.  

Who is suggesting that? I said that when CSS is used *inline* in XML
documents it should use XML conventions. I didn't say that CSS must always
be used inline in XML documents. Two different issues.

> Yeah, aligning it is real simple:
> 
> <!ATTLIST myElement
>         style CDATA #IMPLIED>
> 
> Making it align with _your_ conventions, on the other hand, is a different
> matter that makes lots of people's lives much more complicated.

The convention of using separate attribute values for each property of an
element is not "my" convention. It is the XML convention used by everyone
except SVG. You haven't presented any evidence that separate attributes
would make anyone's life more complicated. You should say something soon
because the XSL formatting object paradigm uses separate attributes and if
they are going down the wrong path then they should know.
-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

If you spend any time administering Windows NT, you're far too familiar 
with the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) which displays the cause of the 
crash and gives some information about the state of the system when 
it crashed.  -- "Microsoft Developer Network Magazine"


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