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Posted to users@cocoon.apache.org by Stephen Winnall <st...@winnall.ch> on 2006/01/12 19:37:11 UTC

XCSS?

I am setting up a website using Cocoon and want to generate XHTML and  
use CSS to
handle the presentation. Like everyone else I am being bitten by the  
fact that 90% of all
browsers conform to the CSS standard, but the browser that 90% of the  
users use does not :-(

(I think) I have managed to banish all the browser dependencies (for  
my site, at least) into
the CSS file and I have a clean SoC-like separation of content and  
presentation. So what I
would now like to do is use Cocoon to generate different CSS files to  
accommodate MSIE.
I would also like to handle some I18N issues I have in the CSS files.

Does anyone know of a way of writing something that could be called  
"XCSS", i.e. CSS
written in an XML syntax, which can be transformed/serialised into  
proper CSS?

Apart from passing remarks (including one from the maestro at

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/cocoon-dev/200003.mbox/% 
3C38BFDC36.B338A9B8@apache.org%3E

) I have been unable to find any references to much like this. I have  
spent about some time
trawling Google, but XSL and CSS are not good search terms (they  
throw up too many
results), and XCSS doesn't throw up anything conclusive, although the  
results do confirm
that I am not the first person who wants to do this.

The project JXCSS does the other thing, i.e. convert CSS into XCSS,  
but the documentation
says that there is no transformation available to produce CSS from XCSS:

	"Stylesheets need to be written to generate and pretty-print CSS  
source code"

I will admit to being reluctant to write such a stylesheet myself  
because I am already
severely sidetracked doing this website, and I need to get back to my  
other tasks.

I would be grateful for any hints on where to look. And if there is a  
Better Way, please
let me know.

Steve



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Re: XCSS?

Posted by Bob Harner <bo...@gmail.com>.
On 1/12/06, Stephen Winnall <st...@winnall.ch> wrote:
> I am setting up a website using Cocoon and want to generate XHTML and
> use CSS to
> handle the presentation. Like everyone else I am being bitten by the
> fact that 90% of all
> browsers conform to the CSS standard, but the browser that 90% of the
> users use does not :-(
>
> (I think) I have managed to banish all the browser dependencies (for
> my site, at least) into
> the CSS file and I have a clean SoC-like separation of content and
> presentation. So what I
> would now like to do is use Cocoon to generate different CSS files to
> accommodate MSIE.
> I would also like to handle some I18N issues I have in the CSS files.
>
> Does anyone know of a way of writing something that could be called
> "XCSS", i.e. CSS
> written in an XML syntax, which can be transformed/serialised into
> proper CSS?
>
> Apart from passing remarks (including one from the maestro at
>
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/cocoon-dev/200003.mbox/%
> 3C38BFDC36.B338A9B8@apache.org%3E
>
> ) I have been unable to find any references to much like this. I have
> spent about some time
> trawling Google, but XSL and CSS are not good search terms (they
> throw up too many
> results), and XCSS doesn't throw up anything conclusive, although the
> results do confirm
> that I am not the first person who wants to do this.
>
> The project JXCSS does the other thing, i.e. convert CSS into XCSS,
> but the documentation
> says that there is no transformation available to produce CSS from XCSS:
>
>         "Stylesheets need to be written to generate and pretty-print CSS
> source code"
>
> I will admit to being reluctant to write such a stylesheet myself
> because I am already
> severely sidetracked doing this website, and I need to get back to my
> other tasks.
>
> I would be grateful for any hints on where to look. And if there is a
> Better Way, please
> let me know.
>
> Steve

Well, in cocoon it's pretty easy to serve up different CSS files based
on the browser.  Per
http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/userdocs/browser-selector.html just use a
BrowerSelector component, and within each branch call a reader with
the src attribute for each pointing to either the ie or non-ie CSS
file.  Will this work for you?

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Re: XCSS?

Posted by Joerg Heinicke <jo...@gmx.de>.
On 12.01.2006 19:37, Stephen Winnall wrote:

> Does anyone know of a way of writing something that could be called  
> "XCSS", i.e. CSS
> written in an XML syntax, which can be transformed/serialised into  
> proper CSS?

Don't know what it is worth, but there is something in the Cocoon bug 
tracker: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COCOON-1200.

Jörg

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Re: XCSS?

Posted by Peter Flynn <pf...@ucc.ie>.
On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 18:37, Stephen Winnall wrote:
> I am setting up a website using Cocoon and want to generate XHTML and
> use CSS to handle the presentation. Like everyone else I am being
> bitten by the fact that 90% of all browsers conform to the CSS
> standard, but the browser that 90% of the users use does not :-(

<grin>
http://explorerdestroyer.com/
</grin>

> Does anyone know of a way of writing something that could be called
> "XCSS", i.e. CSS written in an XML syntax, which can be
> transformed/serialised into proper CSS?

This would be a useful project: to codify all known differences in CSS
support and behaviour between the browsers. DocBook already has the
structure needed to support effectivities and it would be fairly easy to
add or modify (eg making the vendor attribute IDREFS so you can make
robust references to the browser versions

    <funcsynopsis id="attr" conformance="css2" vendor="ff1.5 ff1.4">
      <funcprototype>
	<funcdef>attr</funcdef>
	<paramdef>attribute name</paramdef>
      </funcprototype>
      <funcsynopsisinfo>Returns the value of the named attribute for
      the currently-selected element type.</funcsynopsisinfo>
    </funcsynopsis>

///Peter


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Re: XCSS?

Posted by Stephen Winnall <st...@winnall.ch>.
Thanks to Bob and Chris for their feedback.

However, my question is not how to serve up different CSS files  
depending on the target
browser. What I would like to do is create those different CSS files  
from a single source
(e.g. a transformer creates different CSS files from a common source  
depending on what
the target browser is). It seems to me that it would be trivial if  
CSS had an XML syntax: my
questions are:

1) is there a suitable XML DTD or schema for something (let's call it  
XCSS) which is 1-to-1
mappable to CSS?
2) does an appropriate transformation (or serialisation) from XCSS to  
CSS exist?

One answer to 1) is "yes, see JXCSS". An answer to 2) is what I am  
looking for.

The pipeline should look something like the following (if you'll  
excuse the meta-syntax):

match *.css
	generate XCSS from a single source
	if browser is standards- and security-challenged {
		transform the XCSS stream to suit
	}
	transform for I18N
	transform from XCSS to CSS
	serialise using TextSerializer

or perhaps the serialisation could go direct from XCSS rather like FO  
or POI.

The XHTML should contain no <style> tags to preserve SoC. In my  
XHTML, all I want to have is

	<link href="my.css" ...>

Steve

On 12 Jan 2006, at 19:37, Stephen Winnall wrote:

> I am setting up a website using Cocoon and want to generate XHTML  
> and use CSS to
> handle the presentation. Like everyone else I am being bitten by  
> the fact that 90% of all
> browsers conform to the CSS standard, but the browser that 90% of  
> the users use does not :-(
>
> (I think) I have managed to banish all the browser dependencies  
> (for my site, at least) into
> the CSS file and I have a clean SoC-like separation of content and  
> presentation. So what I
> would now like to do is use Cocoon to generate different CSS files  
> to accommodate MSIE.
> I would also like to handle some I18N issues I have in the CSS files.
>
> Does anyone know of a way of writing something that could be called  
> "XCSS", i.e. CSS
> written in an XML syntax, which can be transformed/serialised into  
> proper CSS?
>
> Apart from passing remarks (including one from the maestro at
>
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/cocoon-dev/200003.mbox/% 
> 3C38BFDC36.B338A9B8@apache.org%3E
>
> ) I have been unable to find any references to much like this. I  
> have spent about some time
> trawling Google, but XSL and CSS are not good search terms (they  
> throw up too many
> results), and XCSS doesn't throw up anything conclusive, although  
> the results do confirm
> that I am not the first person who wants to do this.
>
> The project JXCSS does the other thing, i.e. convert CSS into XCSS,  
> but the documentation
> says that there is no transformation available to produce CSS from  
> XCSS:
>
> 	"Stylesheets need to be written to generate and pretty-print CSS  
> source code"
>
> I will admit to being reluctant to write such a stylesheet myself  
> because I am already
> severely sidetracked doing this website, and I need to get back to  
> my other tasks.
>
> I would be grateful for any hints on where to look. And if there is  
> a Better Way, please
> let me know.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@cocoon.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@cocoon.apache.org
>


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