Re: style sheets for Arena

William Perry (wmperry@spry.com)
Fri, 8 Sep 95 19:07 PDT


Scott Bigham writes:
> >- There has not been much public disussion on the latest CSS
> >draft. [...]
>
> Oh? Well, there are a few comments I've been meaning to make, so if
> the list will indulge me, I'll take this opportunity.
>
> > - add support for user-selectable multiple style sheets through the
> > TITLE attribute of the LINK element. Turning on/off various style
> > sheets should be under the interactive control of the user.

> My main interest in multiple style sheets is that in the potential
> eventuality of multiple co-existing style sheet notations (which we now
> have, sort of, with the two existing versions of the CSS draft), page
> authors might write the same style information in multiple notations for
> maximum coverage. It might be useful in that event to have a way to tell
> the rendering agent that "These three <LINK REL=STYLE>'s all contain the
> same information; once you've successfully parsed one of them, you can
> ignore the others." It might also be useful to be able to identify the
> style sheet's notation in the <LINK> so that the rendering agent could
> easily skip style sheets in notations it couldn't parse.

I would say this is the perfect place for HTTP content negotiation. When
emacs-w3 requests a stylesheet, it only sends the Accept headers:

Accept: application/stylesheet ; notation=experimental
Accept: application/stylesheet ; notation=w3c-style
Accept: application/stylesheet ; notation=css
Accept: application/stylesheet ; notation=dsssl-lite

-Bill P.