>
> [ Sorry for the continued cross-posting, but this seems relevant
> to both mailing lists... ]
>
> Hakon Lie <howcome@w3.org> wrote:
>
> > Glenn Adams writes:
> > > (2) it should be possible to include multiple STYLE elements, each using
> > > different notations (in order to support the specification of appearance
> > > not only with different style languages but also with different versions
> > > of a style language).
> > >
> > > (3) it would therefore be impossible to determine what notation a STYLE
> > > attribute is using without introducing either (a) a convention which used
> > > a prior STYLE element in HEAD to specify a notation which not only applied
> > > to that element but which persists to subsequent elements which employed
> > > a STYLE attribute (clearly this is a hack); or (b) an application
> > > convention that a STYLE attribute always followed a particular notation;
> > > (c) an additional attribute STYLE-NOTATION that would be concurrently
> > > required with a STYLE attribute (a constraint that an SGML parser could
> > > not validate).
> >
> > (a) could work just fine, but there is a fourth alternative: an
> > attribute to the BODY tag. I believe someone suggested (Bill Perry?)
> > this during the workshop.
>
> None of these solutions allow multiple notations to be used
> with a single document, though. (``Click _here_ for HTML
> with Netscape-format style attributes, click _here_ for
> HTML with Arena-format style attributes, click _here_ for PDF.'')
>
> A STYLE attribute is not _necessarily_ a horrible idea, but
> it's vital that a single style notation be standardized before
> adding it to HTML.
Not necessarily, so long as we stick to a STYLE element in HEAD with a
NOTATION attribute, or to external stylesheets and content negotiation.
On a purely experimental basis, I built Navipress and CSS stylesheets for
one of my pages and used content negotiation very successfully to get the
correct stylesheets for three different browsers. (The browsers were
emacs w3-mode, Arena 0.97 and a Navipress beta.)
Benjamin C. W. Sittler