Then use 'Content-type: text/html ; version=3.0' and content negotiation,
and put it in the <style></style> tags if performance is that huge an
issue. The fetching of style sheets should of course always be tunable by
the user. 'Only fetch stylesheets from xy.com, always turn them off from
ab.com, prompt otherwise' or some such.
Another big win to using the link statement is that if a company wants to
have all their pages in black on white, they don't have to replicate
<body bgcolor=#FFFFFF foreground=#0000>
or
<style>
doc: color.text = black
doc: color.background = white
</style>
In _every_ document on their server. They can just have the:
<link rel=stylesheet href="/styles/companywide.sty">
Then if they decide everything needs to be in yellow on red 24 point
helvetica, they can do it by changing just one file.
This same issue of backwards compatibility comes up with many things,
tables, math, and <fig>ures included.
-Bill P.