Re: Stylesheets

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 08:42:29PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:49:14PM -0600, John Fleck wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:24:39PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > > > > We haven't discussed how we should deal with stylesheets, so
> > > > > we should put a little thought into this.  What do we want?
> >
> > > If #2, how would we test to see which stylesheet to use? File
> > > location? And what of files not in a predictable location? Fall back
> > > to a standard default stylesheet with no project-specific decorations?
> > >
> > > It would be simpler to go with #1 and have any project-specific
> > > decorations specified in the doc. Can we do that?
> >
> > My initial reaction to this is that it feels "icky", if you'll excuse
> > the complicated technical terms. :-)
> >
> > Possible solution:
> >
> > Make it is the responsibility of whatever application you are using to
> > display the help to choose an appropriate stylesheet. Even the document
> > author cannot always say what is correct (for example, there may be a
> > variety of text-to-speech transformations that can be done for the
> > sight-impaired -- that is where the displaying application comes into
> > play).
> >
> > Now, this means that each help browser needs to have a collection of
> > available stylesheets and apply the right one (or a default). For
> > example, GNOME help pages, info pages, KDE help pages, LDP pages, etc.
> > So we end up needing a catalog system again, a la DSSSL catalogs or
> > ScrollKeeper. I don't know enough about ScrollKeeper to know if it's
> > suitable for this or not.
> 
> This is what I was thinking in the past.  Each document could specify a
> stylesheet which should be used to display it.  (eg. GNOME docs specify
> they should use the standard GNOME stylesheet, ...).  Probably the best
> way to do this would be to use ScrollKeeper/OMF right now.

Umm .. I didn't think that was my idea at all, but you are right. My
contention is that the stylesheets are a part of the presentation
component (the browser), not the information component (the XML
document).

This has to be done by a third party application (e.g. ScrollKeeper), so
that we can incorporate things like manual and info pages (which don't
contain the required meta-information and we can't really patch
everything in sight).


> BTW: Really this isn't quite what ScrollKeeper was made for. So eventually
> the OMF metadata should be embedded in the document/DocBook itself. Then
> the help browser, or possibly a different library under the browser which
> includes db2html3 and other tools for the help browser, would handle
> matching a stylesheet to the document.

My understanding is that ScrollKeeper stored the location and certain
metadata about each document on my system (when it's in full flight). So
why doesn't the "document's project" belong there. I'm not doubting your
assertian, Dan -- I don't understand as much of ScrollKeeper as I would
like, so I'm legitimately seeking information here.

> Wherever the code is placed, the result would be what Malcolm
> suggests: The document+OMF specifies a stylesheet by name and then a
> catalog is used to register and look up stylesheets.

Oh, this _is_ what I suggested, after all. I am stupid today. :-(

Now I see what I was saying: if I was blind or wanted to listen to help
files as I fell asleep at night, I could make the catalog entry for
GNOME help documentation point to my aural stylesheet of choice.

> What do people think about this?

I think you understood me better than I did. Thanks for the explanation.
:-)

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Honk if you love peace and quiet.