[sword-devel] OSIS formatting

[Chris Little]

I think supporting per-module style-sheets (CSS) through a .conf 
attribute is basically the plan. It probably won't really be moved on 
until BibleCS moves to an HTML renderer though.

--Chris

Greg Hellings wrote:
> I agree whole-heartedly that the move ought to be made away from style 
> attributes and to class attributes.  I suspect that it would not be 
> exceedingly difficult to enable a module to contain a specification of 
> an external stylesheet to be used with it (a new line in the conf file?  
> automatically look for the existence of one?).  The OSIS spec, in my 
> recollection, indicates that CSS and XSL should be used to apply 
> formatting, so adding that type of support would move closer towards 
> conformance with the OSIS spec.
> 
> I am in support of presentation/data separation.  But how can that be 
> currently accomplished with OSIS in Sword is my main concern.
> 
> --Greg
> 
> On 6/16/05, *DM Smith* <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Greg Hellings wrote:
> 
>      > DM,
>      >          You are correct.  When the style="" tag is omitted, and the
>      > various classes that Troy pointed out are used, then most of the
>      > formatting that can be done with ThML can also be done with OSIS.
>      > However, the fact remains that since ThML is built off of HTML, the
>      > importers for Sword accept the style="" tag from a ThML-encoded file.
>      > However, they do not accept that attribute if the input is OSIS.
> 
>     In the HTML world, the move is away from the style element and toward
>     the class attribute. And away from tables for layout toward CSS
>     placement for divs, spans and other elements. The goal is to separate
>     content from presentation and to supply sufficient markup to content
>     that it can be styled externally.
> 
>     OSIS has a two attributes that are comparable to class: type and
>     subtype. These can easily be used by xslt to create html class
>     attributes.
> 
>      > I have been using Bibletime to display highly formatted texts which
>      > include colored fonts, backgrounds, borders, table spacing and
>     widths,
>      > etc and when the information is encoded with ThML and style="" tags
>      > containing a very wide range of CSS then the formatting is preserved
>      > beautifully.  It is all completely ignored by Bibletime if the input
>      > is OSIS.
> 
>     I think that this is the best argument for OSIS.
> 
>      >          That said, I appreciate most of the formatting that can be
>      > done with CSS.  It allows for a much larger range of display
>      > characteristics than OSIS's very small selection of text-only
>      > formatting.  If Bibletime and/or Sword would accept CSS formatting
>      > from a style="" tag in OSIS, then my problems would mysteriously
>      > vanish into thin air, but for the time being the wider range of
>      > ThML-allowed formatting thrrough the availability of CSS has
>      > influenced my choice of formatting to be ThML.
> 
>     Again, I think that class should be used instead of style and that OSIS
>     has a mechanism which is comparable.
> 
>      > As an alternative, Sword might allow a user-defined XSL or even
>     CSS to
>      > be specified with each module to define formatting on a per-module
>      > basis so that the distinction between data and presentation
>     (which is
>      > inherent to XML's purpose) may be maintained.
> 
>     I think that this is a great idea. At least as a starting point. Each
>     delivery system will need to style the document to its own rendering
>     engine. The advantage of a stylesheet is that it would define all of
>     the
>     module writer's intentions regarding the "class" attribute (or
>     type/subtype in OSIS.)
> 
>      > --Greg
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page