Stylesheet Language

marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 93 23:48:42 -0700
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9310230648.AA13847@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: wei@sting.berkeley.edu (Pei Y. Wei)
Cc: hackers@ora.com, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Stylesheet Language
In-reply-to: <9310222103.AA03264@sting.Berkeley.EDU>
References: <9310222103.AA03264@sting.Berkeley.EDU>
What's the relationship between this and Rob Raisch's stylesheet
proposal from this summer?  (Rob, are you out there? :-)

Cheers,
Marc

Pei Y. Wei writes:
> I'm working on a stylesheet library that will hopefully be useful for
> all W3 browsers. A prototype is implemented in viola, but before I 
> get too far on this-- producing a more formal RFC and stand-alone
> library and testing code, I'd like to get people's impression on it. 
> 
> Particularly, any problem with the the syntax of the style description
> language?
> 
> Here is a sample stylesheet:
> 
> (HEAD,BODY				fontSize=normal
> 					BGColor=white
> 					FGColor=black
>     (H1					fontSize=largest
> 					BGColor=red
> 					FGColor=white)
>     (H2					fontSize=large)
>     (P)
>     (A					FGColor=red)
>     (CMD,KBD,SCREEN,LISTING,EXAMPLE	fontFamily=fixed)
>     (BOLD,EMPH,STRONG			fontWeight=bold)
>     (I				 	fontSlant=italic)
>     (ADDRESS
>         (P				fontSlant=italic))
>     (OL
> 	(LI				numStyle=roman
> 	    (LI                         numStyle=number
> 		(LI			numStyle=alpha)
> 	    )
> 	)
>     )
>     (FOOTNOTE				fontSize=small
> 	(P)
>     )
> )
> 
> >From this stylesheet, you can derive the following information:
> 
> * <P> inside of <HEAD> and <BODY> gets fontSize of "normal".
> * <P> inside of <ADDRESS> gets italic slant font.
> * <P> inside of <FOOTNOTE> gets a "small" font.
> * List items in first, second, and third levels are numbered differently.
> * Since <BOLD> and <STRONG> look the same, they are succintly lumpped
>   together.
> 
> Note that properties are inherited down the tree, unless overridden.
> So, the color information that is specifed at the top is used all over,
> except for <H1> which redefines its own colors. 
> 
> Having this inheritance behaviour also helps to keep the description
> short, as lots of information can be derived by the context in the 
> tree structure.
> 
> The lone "(P)"s are there to engage the respective <P> tags to be in
> those particular contexts. 
> 
> A document uses a <LINK REL="STYLE" HREF="URL_to_a_stylesheet">
> to associate to a stylesheet. It's an open question as to whether
> we should allow multiple stylesheets in a document, and where
> this link can be specified (once only, in the <HEAD>?).
> 
> 
> -Pei				Pei Y. Wei
> 				O'Reilly & Associates