Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Is it time to rely on CSS?

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 11:10 2003 01 20 -0800, Bob Stayton wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 01:21:43PM -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
>> There are more and more bug reports coming in of the form
>> 
>>   "Why are you doing X? You should be using CSS."
>> 
>> For example, <b> elements in figure titles, background color on
>> tables, etc. Even the inline style markup in admonitions falls into
>> this category as, if we relied on CSS, we'd expect an external
>> stylesheet to apply that style.
>> 
>> Historically, the stylesheets have tried to walk some sort of a line
>> between relying on CSS and getting reasonable results in browsers that
>> don't support CSS.
>> 
>> Is it time to move that line farther out, removing things that could
>> be done with CSS and just expecting CSS to be used?
>
>I think this is ok.
>
>I'm concerned about the transition.
>If we are expecting CSS to be used, would we supply a
>basic CSS stylesheet that implements these changes and gives
>people the framework for customizing?

Bob seems to be inferring that Norm's message implies
a standalone stylesheet.

But CSS use can happen in three levels:
1.  in the style attribute
2.  in the <style> element
3.  in a separate stylesheet.

There are extra problems with managing standalone stylesheets
(much as I appreciate the benefits of separating content and style).

I'm not sure what Norm's message was implying--Norm, can you
elaborate?

paul