Are CSS over ???

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

Re: Are CSS over ???

Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=blue]
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:[color=green]
>> XHTML is just HTML formatted as XML.[/color]
>
> Over-simplification.[/color]

Could you give more definitions?

--
Stanimir

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Are CSS over ???

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
[color=blue]
> Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=green]
> > On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:[color=darkred]
> >> XHTML is just HTML formatted as XML.[/color]
> >
> > Over-simplification.[/color]
>
> Could you give more definitions?[/color]

I could. Easier just to cite http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#whatis-xhtml

| a family of current and future document types and modules that
| reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML

[David Dorward]

Re: Are CSS over ???

Eroom Tam wrote:
[color=blue]
> Guys I know today develop sites that only work properly in Mozilla b/c
> that's what everyone *should* use.[/color]

My site only works properly in Mozilla... but it still works in just about
every browser out there.

Mozilla can do things that no other browser can, that's no reason to avoid
using those features if they have no side effects in weaker browsers.

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/

[Jonathan Snook]

Re: Are CSS over ???

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4 .53.03100220273 30.12654@ppepc5 6.ph.gla.ac.uk. ..[color=blue]
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=darkred]
> > > On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
> > >> XHTML is just HTML formatted as XML.
> > >
> > > Over-simplification.[/color]
> >
> > Could you give more definitions?[/color]
>
> I could. Easier just to cite http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#whatis-xhtml
>
> | a family of current and future document types and modules that
> | reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML[/color]

Hmmm, let me rephrase the initial statement:
"XHTML [1.0] is just HTML [4.01] formatted as XML".

Even 1.1 is darn close to 1.0. Despite all the talk of "modularization " and
what not on the site, for the average developer, the above statement is
quite true.

What most people probably miss but in the statement is that for HTML to be
formatted as XML, you have to take into account the purpose of XML: to use
for marking up content and not to use for presentation.

Jonathan


--

http://www.snook.ca/

[Jim Ley]

Re: Are CSS over ???

On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 02:52:36 GMT, "Jonathan Snook"
<goto_www.snook .ca@snook.ca> wrote:
[color=blue]
>you have to take into account the purpose of XML: to use
>for marking up content and not to use for presentation.[/color]

That's the purpose of XML, rats did anyone tell SVG, X3D etc. ?

Jim.
--
comp.lang.javas cript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq/

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Are CSS over ???

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Jonathan Snook wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> > > > On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
> > > >> XHTML is just HTML formatted as XML.[/color][/color][/color]

[...]
[color=blue]
> Hmmm, let me rephrase the initial statement:
> "XHTML [1.0] is just HTML [4.01] formatted as XML".[/color]

XHTML/1.0 is indeed just HTML/4.01 reformulated in XML. But that
isn't what the previous poster had said.

XHTML/1.0 is anomalous, especially the "transition al" variant. It
takes most of the disadvantages of HTML/4.01 transitional, adds a few
more disadvantages, and excludes many of the benefits intended for
XHTML. So it's distinctly misleading to speak of XHTML/1.0 as being
in any way typical of what XHTML is intended to be.
[color=blue]
> Even 1.1 is darn close to 1.0. Despite all the talk of "modularization " and
> what not on the site, for the average developer, the above statement is
> quite true.[/color]

That's exactly what the W3C should have feared, since XHTML/1.0 has
nothing that's worth having relative to HTML/4.01, and risks acting as
the "thin end of the wedge" to turn XHTML into just a different
flavour of tag soup, instead of being the clean, parseable, "no error
fixups or guesswork" markup which XML promised.
[color=blue]
> What most people probably miss but in the statement is that for HTML to be
> formatted as XML, you have to take into account the purpose of XML: to use
> for marking up content and not to use for presentation.[/color]

Oh, XML is another meta-language like SGML: a language for defining
markup languages. There's nothing stopping you from defining a
WYSIWYG display formatting language in XML if you want to. Indeed,
one major vendor already seems to have done so. But that language
would not then be XHTML(tm) as intended by the W3C.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/ipr-notice-20021231#W3C_Trademarks

IANAL and that was not legal advice, which I'm not qualified to offer.

[Jonathan Snook]

Re: Are CSS over ???

"Jim Ley" <jim@jibbering. com> wrote in message
news:3f7d29b8.3 42191295@news.c is.dfn.de...[color=blue]
> On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 02:52:36 GMT, "Jonathan Snook"
> <goto_www.snook .ca@snook.ca> wrote:
>[color=green]
> >you have to take into account the purpose of XML: to use
> >for marking up content and not to use for presentation.[/color]
>
> That's the purpose of XML, rats did anyone tell SVG, X3D etc. ?[/color]

Ah, no, I don't think they have. Can you tell them? ;)

I was in "HTML" mode and was thinking of XML in that context. As you and
Alan have said, XML is just a markup language and can mean whatever you want
it to mean.

Jonathan


--

http://www.snook.ca/

[Eric Bohlman]

Re: Are CSS over ???

jim@jibbering.c om (Jim Ley) wrote in
news:3f7d29b8.3 42191295@news.c is.dfn.de:
[color=blue]
> On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 02:52:36 GMT, "Jonathan Snook"
> <goto_www.snook .ca@snook.ca> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>you have to take into account the purpose of XML: to use
>>for marking up content and not to use for presentation.[/color]
>
> That's the purpose of XML, rats did anyone tell SVG, X3D etc. ?[/color]

Seriously, that's a common misconception about XML. XML is simply a set of
rules for creating languages that specify structured information. The
information can be quite abstract, or it can be a concrete specification of
how to present something. SVG, X3D, and XSL-FO are examples of
"presentational " XML vocabularies. Docbook or TEI, on the other hand, are
examples of more-or-less purely structural XML vocabularies (TEI is a good
example of how the boundary between structure and presentation isn't all
that sharp. TEI is used to mark up historical manuscripts, where you need
to include *both* purely structural information like division into chapters
and paragraphs, *and* fairly presentational information like pagination and
usage of scripts).

As others have pointed out, many "structural " XML vocabularies can be
displayed with the help of a CSS stylesheet and possibly an XSLT
transformation. For my own personal use, I collect quotes on a variety of
subjects, encode them in an XML vocabulary called QEL, and display them in
my browser with a CSS stylesheet.

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

Re: Are CSS over ???

Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=blue]
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:[color=green]
>> Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=darkred]
>>> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
>>>> XHTML is just HTML formatted as XML.
>>>
>>> Over-simplification.[/color]
>>
>> Could you give more definitions?[/color]
>
> I could. Easier just to cite http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#whatis-xhtml
>
> | a family of current and future document types and modules that
> | reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML[/color]

Hmm. So let me state it that way: XML is nothing more but improved
SGML syntax to specify structured data. How this data is interpreted
is up to the application handling the data. There are couple of
standard XML applications like XSLT, SVG etc. which needs special
application to process them. So I was talking (I don't know why
you've missed that my statement):
[color=blue]
> HTML defines the functionality (forms, image/object maps, etc.)
> which XHTML should do, too.[/color]

--
Stanimir

[Brian]

Re: Are CSS over ???

Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=blue]
>
> That's exactly what the W3C should have feared, since XHTML/1.0 has
> nothing that's worth having relative to HTML/4.01, and risks acting as
> the "thin end of the wedge" to turn XHTML into just a different
> flavour of tag soup, instead of being the clean, parseable, "no error
> fixups or guesswork" markup which XML promised.[/color]

I've read this before, that xml promised to end tag soup parsing. I'm
not sure I really understand how a browser behaves in tag soup mode as
opposed to standards mode. Is it simply a matter of not having to fix
errors by guesswork? Second question: how does xhtml/xml preclude
that? i.e., what does an xhtml browser do when it encounters an error?

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[hholidayy]

Re: Are CSS over ???

Thank you all for you help

You confirmed my believes and reassured me
At least I know now that I'm not loosing my time learning CSS

(BTW: The HTML book I finished was actually a HTML/XHTML book, so at least
my base is ok)

You were very helpful

Thanks again

Ray

[Henri Sivonen]

Re: Are CSS over ???

In article <x0jfb.488811$c F.171643@rwcrns c53>,
Brian <usenet1@mangym utt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I've read this before, that xml promised to end tag soup parsing. I'm
> not sure I really understand how a browser behaves in tag soup mode as
> opposed to standards mode.[/color]

The Quirks and Standards modes of contemporary browsers when used with
text/html are both tag soup modes when it comes to parsing markup.

If you send XHTML as text/html, it will be parsed as tag soup by
contemporary browsers.[1] In particular, the (rather common) assumption
that the standards mode of Mozilla somehow enforces HTML correctness is
utterly incorrect. Also, the idea that Appendix C-compliant XHTML 1.0
served as text/html buys you client-side well-formedness enforcement is
a fallacy.

Contemporary browsers use their XML parsers and Standards layout modes
for XML content types (text/xml, application/xml, */*+xml). However, XML
parsing + standards layout is a different combination than tag soup
parsing + standards layout, which is commonly referred to as "the
Standards mode".
[color=blue]
> Is it simply a matter of not having to fix errors by guesswork?[/color]

No. The common misconception is that the design goal of the Standards
layout modes of contemporary browsers is to enforce input correctness.
It is not. The design goal is to yield standards-compliant results
provided that the input is correct.
[color=blue]
> Second question: how does xhtml/xml preclude that?[/color]

XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml doesn't preclude Draconian error
handling. However, the existing text/html tag soup precludes Draconian
error handling when processing content delivered as text/html.
[color=blue]
> i.e., what does an xhtml browser do when it encounters an error?[/color]

It it depends on the nature of the error. When a fatal error (in the XML
sense) is encountered, Mozilla refuses to display the page and displays
an error message. Alternatively, an XHTML browser could display the page
from the beginning to the point where the error was encountered. The CSS
parser should recover from errors and discard parts of the style sheet
as specified in the CSS parsing rules.

What exactly happens with non-fatal XML errors depends on the browser.
In practice browsers tend to be non-validating. Mozilla doesn't complain
if you violate the content model defined in the DTD. Mozilla treats an
occurrence of an entity reference for which the definition was not
processed as a fatal error. Opera and Safari do not and render the rest
of the page despite missing characters.

[1] With the possible exception of some obscure embedded browsers on
mobile phones. However, even those can have a gateway server that makes
the gateway+phone combination act as a tag soup browser.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi

http://www.iki.fi/hsivonen/

Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html

[Shawn K. Quinn]

Re: Are CSS over ???

[followup trimmed to c.i.w.a.stylesh eets]

hholidayy wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi,
> I'm very new to web designing
> I'm designing my first web site for a friend of mind that has a small
> business
> I recently finished a book on HTML and started playing in Dreamweaver MX
> Then realize there was a faster and more efficient way to do things with
> CSS
>
> So I started self-learning CSS, about a week ago
> Today, while I was studying my CSS book at work...a programmer from my
> firm said to me...
>
> " What the hell are you doing....CSS !!!, those are over, you're loosing
> your time! You should learn XML and XSL, that's the new thing !!!!!"[/color]

XML and XSL do not replace CSS. Neither does CSS replace HTML. They are
completely different technologies designed to fulfill completely different
roles.
[color=blue]
> I tried to find info on the Web about "The Famous Death of CSS !!!!" and I
> realy don't come up with anything.
> I also took a brief look at the XML "world", and I don't really see it has
> a replacement but more has a add-on; a supplement to the HTML-CSS world
> already in place.[/color]

XML is a replacement for SGML, not HTML.

CSS is going to be with us for a good long while.
[color=blue]
> Now, my friend "programmin g genius i know it all"...was he a lunatic that
> should stay in his Delphi World, or am I miss something here and loosing
> my time learning CSS????[/color]

He's a lunatic who should stick to his own world.

--
Shawn K. Quinn