Proposal: XSL Stylesheets

[Eric Baudais <baudais okstate edu>]

> --- Begin Message ---
> In GNOME 1.4 the GDP has used their own DTD or DocBook and DSSSL stylesheets 
> for the DocBook SGML docs.  In GNOME 2.0 we are going to use DocBook XML and 
> therefore need some new stylesheets and a new way of constructing them.
>
> Traditionally the DSSSL stylesheet has been an all-inclusive stylesheet 
> covering print as well as HTML.  This has worked fine since few knew how to 
> modify them and they have rarely needed to be changed.  With the advent of 
> the switch to XML the XSL stylesheets make changing how the documentation is 
> displayed easier.  Also a greater number of people know how to write and 
> modify XSL.
>
> Proposal:
>
> Since a greater number of people know how to write and modify the stylesheets 
> we need a better way to construct a stylesheet.  The stylesheets should be 
> modularized into multiple files.  Each file should be named after the top 
> level tag the templates in the stylesheet modify.
>
> Ex: 
>
> <!-- Custom template to make the term tag bold.-->
> <xsl:template match="variablelist//term">
>   <xsl:call-template name="inline.boldseq"/>
> </xsl:template>
>
> </xsl:stylesheet>
>
> The above example should be placed in the file called "variablelist.xsl" since 
> it matches to the variablelist tag.
>
> A file should not depend on another or be in conflict to another.  All the 
> customizations should take place inside the file and not modify the behavior 
> of the customization, but modify the behavior of the base stylesheet.
>
> The base stylesheet will be the most recent stable version Norman Walsh's 
> docbook-xsl stylesheets found at: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/
>
> Eric Baudais
>
>
> --- End Message ---