Again, to be rude and top-post, not having a specific line in the message to which I wish to comment...
I don't believe anyone is against HTML rendering frontends supplying stylesheets to their output. I believe Bibletime does this for their user selectable themes. I have often lamented the fact that we have at least 3 HTML rendering filter sets and have stated that I would love for us all to agree on a common, more class-ified HTML output if everyone would concede to share the same filter set and help improve the commonly used code. I believe frontend developers were in general agreement that module-specific style sheets would be a bad idea because they already currently allow custom styles for their users and there would most certainly be a conflict between what the module writer desires and for what the user asks. I believe I was against the proposal to replace the current filtering mechanism with an xslt engine. I think this sums up where we all stood the last time we discussed this. Have I misrepresented anyone, please speak up. Troy On 04/19/2011 04:41 PM, Greg Hellings wrote: > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 9:35 AM, DM Smith <dmsm...@crosswire.org> wrote: >> In principle, I like the idea of CSS, but I think there are difficulties >> with CSS. It presumes the elements and structure of what is being styled and >> that the display can handle it. > Are these problems greater than our current solution of "Sorry, nope, > you can't style _anything_ because there are some niche cases where > styling might be bad"? > >> CSS is a container model, but osis2mod unwinds the Book/Section/Paragraph >> structure of a OSIS input into marker elements. How would CSS be written to >> address this? Would it be written for the authored OSIS or the transformed >> OSIS? > Since CSS is a display technology and SWORD does not uses OSIS for > display, clearly this question does not even apply. > >> SWORD has several renderers, HTML, RTF, plain text,.... How would CSS apply >> in the delivery context of RTF? > Can we stop even bringing up RTF? BibleCS's choice to use RTF means > that it will always be limited to the problems inherent in that > technology, just as every other front end has chosen HTML and is > limited by that. This is one of the niche cases I referred to above. > "Well, BibleCS wouldn't be able to employ this SGML-based technology, > so let's just ignore it and keep pooh-pooh-ing it." > >> For example, JSword transforms ThML, GBF, TEI and Plaintext into OSIS >> (augmented with SWORD's usage of TEI). Even OSIS and TEI undergo minor >> transformations. Then OSIS is converted into HTML. To what would the CSS >> apply? > To the HTML, of course. CSS can be applied directly to OSIS, but that > would require JSword to write a massive amount of CSS to give styling > to every OSIS element (just like it currently has an XSL file that > transforms every OSIS element). So long as the application is using > HTML, then the stylesheet would be applied directly to the HTML. > >> The ability of a frontend to use CSS might be a problem. If I remember >> correctly, Xiphos was unable to use CSS. JSword/BD cannot at this time use >> an external stylesheet. Also JSword uses Java's built in HTML renderer and >> it is severely crippled and the HTML it requires is ancient. > Xiphos currently uses two different display technologies: gtkmozembed, > which is the Mozilla/Firefox/Gecko rendering engine. Where that is not > available (Windows) it uses gtkhtml. This makes the Windows build in > the same boat as JSword/BD at present. I am working with Karl, Terry > and Matthew to update to gtkwebkit for all platforms - both because > Mozilla is dropping support for embedding and because I want to see > proper support on Windows for Xiphos. > > Of course, this line of argument is the same as digging up RTF. > "Because the widget I have does not understand this 14 year old, > fundamental web technology, clearly we should not support it." BD is > limited by its choice of display technologies just like Xiphos is. > Xiphos has chosen to update its display technologies. BD would > probably benefit from opting to do so as well. Additionally, with the > CSS file on-disk, BD could simply insert the file directly into the > rendered output, removing the need for the stylesheet to be external. > I believe BPBible up until recently has used the wxHtml widget which > is also limited. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they are > opting to update to a more functional widget. BibleCS, well..... > >> I think that if someone had the initiative to write generalized code that >> would apply CSS to an OSIS module, use it successfully in a front-end, and >> submit it for inclusion into SWORD that it might happen. There are a lot of >> us that are quite willing to discuss an idea, but there are very few that >> will actually implement. Those that do implement prioritize what is >> important to them. > I had support in BibleTime for this already in place when I brought it > up last time. All that was needed was an agreement on a conf-file > entry name by SWORD. But the idea of using CSS was summarily rejected > by the list. Similarly, Jaak gave a "Not on my watch" response to > enabling the technology in BibleTime should SWORD reach an agreement > on it. After all, then BibleTime would not be able to maintain > absolute dominance over every pixel of display. Never mind that it > already does not maintain this by virtue of allowing ThML-sourced > documents to have CSS styling tags on them and allowing external CSS > could actually reduce the impact of this loss of control. > > So I went to Xiphos and Karl was not impressed with the idea. Digging > further turned up the fact that gtkhtml has about as good support for > CSS as Java does. So I offered to help with the gtkwebkit move for a > multiplicity of reasons, one being that hopefully Karl will consider > adding support for external CSS files to Xiphos after the rendering > engine supports them. But if SWORD simply shoots them down again, for > virtue of "That's very nice but MY rendering widget can't handle CSS" > like happened before... > > Part of having a choice of front-ends is the fact that some are > limited by their choices in technology. Perhaps BD has to sacrifice > support for external CSS to be able to run everywhere Java exists. > Perhaps BibleCS has to give up support for CSS because it chooses to > stick with RTF for some reason. Does that mean that Xiphos, BibleTime, > MacSword, BPBible, PocketSword, AndBible and whoever else chooses to > use a modern HTML widget should be so limited? > > --Greg > > _______________________________________________ > sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org > http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel > Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
