xml-dev - Re: from XML+CSS to HTML only

[Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>]

At 04:22 PM 5/26/00 +0200, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
>Peter,
>
>Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>> 
>> My own question is how can I transform HTML+CSS into XSL-FO? the point of
>> this is to be able to print the HTML in the same format as appears on the
>> screen (without using the print button). It requires:
>>         - an XHTML2FO.xsl
>>         - a CSS2FO.* (not XSLT since CSS is not XML)
>
>I think you shouldn't exclude this option.

I didn't! 
>
>Even is CSS is not XML, it would be quite easy to write a CSS SAX parser
>reading CSS files and sending SAX events which could be used in a XSLT
>transformation.

Yes, this is a nice idea.

>
>I have recently done a similar parser reading csv files and sending SAX
>events (see http://4xt.org/news/000524-0001.xml) and if you want to go
>in this direction, I would be happy to write one for CSS.

I would have thought that this would be much appreciated - not just by me!
A useful starting point is CSS-VALIDATOR - a nice tool - it can be located
from the W3C Style page, I think. It parses CSS and validates it.

I think we have had this sort of discussion on XML-DEV before, but it would
be extremely valuable to have FOO2XML converters for the microstructures we
have in the common XML specifications. These include:
	- *.css
	- XPath
	- *.svg attributes (e.g. path/@d, */@style)
and no doubt there will be others.

Yes, it's not too difficult to write parsers for most of these, but the
specs are always to hand, and you normally need these things on-the-fly and
are likely to make mistakes. The actual forma of the XML probably isn't
critical, but should separate the atoms.

>
>> OR:
>>         - CSS2XML.* and CSS-XML2FO.xsl [Does the first exist? it would
be useful
>> to deal with CSS without having to write yet another parser. And it could
>> be important for microparsing SVG attributes.]
>
>It's quite similar, except that by using SAX, you avoid intermediate
>files.
> 
>> and some means of combining the results.
>
>I was also considering the reverse (a FO processor generating XHTML +
>CSS)...

This would also be extremely valuable. If it existed we could create
material directly in XML and use various *.XSL to create the intermediate
*.FO. Then we would have both printed and screen rendering. I am eagerly
awaiting the next version of FOP to see how this could work out...

	P.


Peter Murray-Rust. (CML, VHG and XML-DEV)
CMLC and VirtualXML ConCourse: http://www.cmlconsulting.com/
CML http://www.xml-cml.org/
Virtual HyperGlossary http://www.vhg.org.uk/

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