text transformations in CSS?

Scott E. Preece (preece@predator.urbana.mcd.mot.com)
Fri, 8 Dec 1995 10:13:00 -0600


Has the group thought about including more general textual
transformations in CSS? Something like

P.abstract {text-edit: "<B>Abstract</B> #value"}

where #value is the initial content of the element. This could be
made more useful by adding some additional "variables", like
list item sequence identifiers, page number, date viewed, date last
modifed, title of page, dictionary-term (available in editing the text
of the corresponding dictionary-value), etc?

The same model would be more useful when working with a domain-specific
DTD, where you might do something like:

P.bibcit {text-edit: #child.lastname, #child.firstname \
#child.title. ...}

to transform hierarchical elements (this assumes there's a DTD that
defines an element named BIBCIT that contains elements LASTNAME,
FIRSTNAME, etc.) into a preferred presentation style.

Anything like this in the works?

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com