[osis-core] styles

[Harry Plantinga]

Todd Tillinghast wrote:

>Harry,
>
>QUESTIONS:
>1) Is the reason to embed the CSS in the OSIS document so that it
>displays nicely when working in Word?
>  
>
The reason for having a stylesheet is so that you can customize the 
'look' of your document in any particular rendering environment. 
Presumably whatever uses people have for OSIS documents -- web, print, 
whatever -- we will want to have the ability to associate a stylesheet 
with some documents. The reason for embedding the stylesheet in the OSIS 
document is that we haven't figured out how to read in a stylesheet as a 
separate file, but we want to have the stylesheet available in Word so 
we can render using the stylesheet and also edit the stylesheet in Word.

>2) Is there a reason why two or three "standard" CSS "files" wouldn't
>work for most every OSIS document?  (This seems better than a different
>CSS for each OSIS document or did I miss something?)
>  
>
Yes, one can have a default stylesheet, but in my experience two or 
three standard stylesheets would not satisfy everyone for every use. 
You'd be restricting every book, every sermon, every daily devotional to 
the same typefaces, styles, sizes, etc. What if you want to print a 
large-type version of a document for the vision-impaired, for example?

>3) Does Word automatically create the CSS or is it something that the
>user has to put work into?
>  
>
The Word stylesheet would be converted to and from CSS when word 
documents are saved and loaded from OSIS format.

>4) Is there a way to have "standard" CSS applied to OSIS documents as
>they are being created/edited?
>  
>
Yes, a standard, default stylesheet would control this. We could use a 
default stylesheet in the document templates and allow that to be 
edited, or use a separate default stylesheet and document-specific 
stylesheet.

>5) I appreciate the corner you are in with Word and CSS, to me it makes
>sense to embed the CSS in the OSIS document when working in Word
>(assuming you need the CSS for the OSIS document to display properly in
>Word) and then remove it when saving it or distributing the document 
>outside of the Word editing process.
>  
>
That can certainly be done.

>6) Can you edit an OSIS document with your proposed embedded CSS in Word
>with the OSIS schema as it is currently published?  (Are you requesting
>a change to the schema?)
>  
>
It would not be necessary to change to the schema -- Word can perform an 
XSLT transformation to read in or save an OSIS document without 
validating against the schema. However, I don't know enough about 
namespaces to know whether an OSIS document with a <myNameSpace:style> 
element would be OSIS-valid. I guess it would if we define the namespace 
in the <osis> element. Is that correct?

------------

One more issue is that we haven't come across a pre-existing XML 
stylesheet language that is suitable. CSS is not XML, and it is too hard 
to parse in XSLT.

Our current plan is to store the CSS stylesheet using a custom XML 
syntax. The program that splits out or adds in the stylesheet to the 
OSIS document would have to convert between standard CSS syntax and our 
XML syntax.

-Harry

>Todd
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: osis-core-admin@bibletechnologieswg.org [mailto:osis-core-
>>admin@bibletechnologieswg.org] On Behalf Of Harry Plantinga
>>Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 12:50 PM
>>To: osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
>>Cc: Andrew Proper
>>Subject: Re: [osis-core] styles
>>
>>Todd Tillinghast wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Harry,
>>>
>>>How is it that you have formatting information that you need to
>>>      
>>>
>store?
>  
>
>>>      
>>>
>>Todd,
>>
>>A document stylesheet would allow you to say how all elements of a
>>certain type should be rendered. Whether or not you allow exceptions
>>    
>>
>to
>  
>
>>rules, you need to have the rules in the first place.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I would expect that if you want to allow the user to specify
>>>      
>>>
>formatting
>  
>
>>>in addition to the "standard" formatting directed by the XSLT
>>>transformation being used that you would allow the user to create new
>>><xsl:template> elements in the XSLT transformation that have more
>>>specific XPath match expressions to achieve the desired presentation.
>>>      
>>>
>I
>  
>
>>>don't suspect that CSS would allow such elaborate XPath expressions.
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I suppose you could store formatting in an XSLT stylesheet, but that's
>>kind of like writing
>>a program that prints out your term paper. I prefer a declarative
>>representation of a stylesheet
>>when possible.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>STORING CSS WITHIN AN OSIS DOCUMENT:
>>>1) I think that storing CSS information within an OSIS document is
>>>dangerous because I believe it will encourage users to put
>>>      
>>>
>ideological
>  
>
>>>information into the CSS stored in the OSIS document and not into the
>>>XML elements themselves, leaving the resulting XML portion incomplete
>>>without the CSS based interpretation and presentation.
>>>2) I think we should NOT put CSS in OSIS documents because it implies
>>>      
>>>
>a
>  
>
>>>secondary standard and technology.  OSIS documents should be timeless
>>>and independent of presentation and secondary standards related to
>>>rendering.
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Granted, storing a CSS element in an OSIS document is undesirable. But
>>since we have the ability to output only one files, it's either that
>>    
>>
>or
>  
>
>>no document stylesheet for formatting. Of course, we can immediately
>>separate out the stylesheet into a separate file if desired...
>>
>>-Harry
>>
>>
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>>osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
>>http://www.bibletechnologieswg.org/mailman/listinfo/osis-core
>>    
>>
>
>
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