Publishing XML with CSS instead of XSL?

["K.C. Jones" <kj...@phoenix-pop.com>]

Speaking of CSS...

I'm currently using Opera4, beta2, in part because I've
always loved their product, and in part because I heard it
will support XML.  (Simon St. Laurent will review Opera4's
XML support on xml.com soon.)

What I find is that O4 will not support XSL at all.  XML
rendering is to be done via CSS.  (FYI, their CSS
implementation is apparently much improved, better than N4,
I5, but currently less than M14.)  In the absence of CSS, it
appears to reduce XML to a concatenated stream of element
pcdata.  Ugh.

To make matters cruftier, by default, Opera identifies
itself as Mozzila 4.7 (or was it IE?).  It will only
identify itself as Opera is you go into Preferences ->
Advanced.  So much for trusting server logs.

So it appears to me that Opera is headed towards a flawed,
problematic level of XML support.  Cocoon publishers will
likely have to serve it plain HTML4/XHTML.  The alternative
would be to use XML + CSS for O4.  (And possibly for other
clients that have compatible CSS implementations?)

What does anyone think about this scenario?
Any word I should carry back to the O4 beta newsgroup?

Cheers,
KC Jones

PS: Opera4 could be killer.  Its still very much beta, with
gaping holes in Javascript, Java, https,...  But it is very
promising.  And it promises cross platform portability and a
easy localization.  I'm quite hopeful.