Any suggestions CSS/XML

[Keith Chadwick]

I have an interesting implementation and I am trying to kill two birds with
one stone. In the wizard I am designing the user has the ability to choose
from one of n CSS style sheets to be applied to the end results of the
wizard. I am also thinking of supporting customization of the stylesheet
and this is where my question comes in. I have been commenting my
stylesheets using xml as a guide, for example

<data>
<name>Cool Blue</name>
<comment>yadda</comment>
<styleset name="common">
<styles>
<style name="gridTitle">This style is used to etc...</style>
<style name="gridBody">this style is....</style>
</styles>
<raw>
dummy{}
.gridTitle{font-size:10pt;color:red}
.gridBody{fonts-size:8pt;color:black}
</raw>
</styleset>
...more styleset nodes
</data>
You will notice that the actual styles are contained in the node raw. I have
found that if a create a dummy() empty style the following styles are
correctly picked up by the css parser on all modern browsers!!

So even though this xml/css crossbreed seems to work I wonder if there is a
set way of doing this that I am unaware of. I have done some research but
have not found anything so though I would ask all you smart people.

Cheers
Keith

[Martin Honnen]

Keith Chadwick wrote:

I have an interesting implementation and I am trying to kill two birds with
one stone. In the wizard I am designing the user has the ability to choose
from one of n CSS style sheets to be applied to the end results of the
wizard. I am also thinking of supporting customization of the stylesheet
and this is where my question comes in. I have been commenting my
stylesheets using xml as a guide, for example

<data>
<name>Cool Blue</name>
<comment>yadda</comment>
<styleset name="common">
<styles>
<style name="gridTitle">This style is used to etc...</style>
<style name="gridBody">this style is....</style>
</styles>
<raw>
dummy{}
.gridTitle{font-size:10pt;color:red}
.gridBody{fonts-size:8pt;color:black}
</raw>
</styleset>
...more styleset nodes
</data>
You will notice that the actual styles are contained in the node raw. I have
found that if a create a dummy() empty style the following styles are
correctly picked up by the css parser on all modern browsers!!

So even though this xml/css crossbreed seems to work I wonder if there is a
set way of doing this that I am unaware of. I have done some research but
have not found anything so though I would ask all you smart people.

I am not sure what you gain with the XML commenting and containing CSS
style rules as CSS has a syntax for comments but if you want to serve
the style rules to a browser as a text/css stylesheet then I strongly
suggest to use XSLT to extract them and to send only them to the browser.
That allows you to store the meta data you want to store with a style
sheet but also lets browsers only deal with what their CSS parsers are
supposed to deal with.

BTW: fonts-size is not the correct CSS property name.

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Keith Chadwick]

As I stated I am trying to kill to birds with one stone. I have checked
across several several different browsers and down level browsers as well
and there appears to be no problem with any of the browsers picking up the
CSS.

It was just an idea to try out and was curious as to feedback.

Regards
Keith

I am not sure what you gain with the XML commenting and containing CSS
style rules as CSS has a syntax for comments but if you want to serve
the style rules to a browser as a text/css stylesheet then I strongly
suggest to use XSLT to extract them and to send only them to the browser.
That allows you to store the meta data you want to store with a style
sheet but also lets browsers only deal with what their CSS parsers are
supposed to deal with.

BTW: fonts-size is not the correct CSS property name.

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Martin Honnen]

Keith Chadwick wrote:

As I stated I am trying to kill to birds with one stone. I have checked
across several several different browsers and down level browsers as well
and there appears to be no problem with any of the browsers picking up the
CSS.

The CSS validator at
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-text.html
will tell you that most of that example is unrecognized.
Even if the browsers can cope with your CSS in XML I don't think you
should send more to a browser than is needed and force them to try to
parse the XML as CSS if there are techniques like XSLT which would allow
you to extract the CSS rules from the the XML and just send that to the
browser.
--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Keith Chadwick]

Agreed and again was just trying to kill two birds with one stone.

I will most like duplicate the css file as a true xml file then use a
transformation to write out the customized css files to each user folder
space when they choose to customize.

Cheers
Keith

"Martin Honnen" <Ma***********@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:e9**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Keith Chadwick wrote:

As I stated I am trying to kill to birds with one stone. I have checked
across several several different browsers and down level browsers as well and there appears to be no problem with any of the browsers picking up the CSS.

The CSS validator at
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-text.html
will tell you that most of that example is unrecognized.
Even if the browsers can cope with your CSS in XML I don't think you
should send more to a browser than is needed and force them to try to
parse the XML as CSS if there are techniques like XSLT which would allow
you to extract the CSS rules from the the XML and just send that to the
browser.
--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/