Dale,
The answer is yes and no and complicated by the fact that the statement
you quote from the W3C web site is at least a bit misleading.
Since you are familiar with Panorama, you understand that the purpose of
a stylesheet is to define how the data is displayed on the screen in terms
of type characteristics like font family, size, and emphasis and placement
characteristics like margins, indents, and line and paragraph spacing.
The manner in which these charactertistics are applied is defined by the
stylesheet language. Panaorama has its own style language; others such as
XSL, CSS, and HTML (yes, HTML, as interpreted by each browser vendor, is
really just a stylesheet language) are open standards. Either XSL or CSS
can be used to style an XML document such as an EAD-encoded finding aid.
CSS can also be used to modify an HTML-encoded document.
XSL is entering the final stages of its development and adoption as a
standard. At this point, none of the major browser supports the styling
syntax that XSL defines to create what it calls format objects, i.e., styled
text. CSS is implemented to some extent in both IE and Netscape. Whether
or not the features that are available are suffcient to meet your needs
depends on the complexity of your documents. This will improve when CSS
Level 2 is fully supported and more styling features are available. There
are a number of pages on the Microsoft Web site that describe their current
support for CSS. As you mention, there are several editors for creating
CSS stylesheets.
One of the great strengths of XSL is its ability to manipulate data,
including the transformation from one XML structure to another or from XML
to HTML. Many XML applications currently use this transformational power to
use HTML styling to render an XML document in a browser. This is what
Internet Explorer and other programs such as XT, for example, do- use an XSL
stylesheet to create HTML formatting syntax. Such an HTML-formatted
document can then incorporate CSS styling to modify the display further.
This is what the W3C page means when it says that CSS may be used with XSL.
May be used but is not necessary unless one wishes to modify the default
display of the browser.
You can read all about this in the forthcoming EAD Application
Guidelines.
Michael
Michael Fox
Head of Processing
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Blvd West
St. Paul MN 55102-1906
phone: 651-296-1014
fax: 651-296-9961
[log in to unmask]
**NOTE NEW AREA CODE EFFECTIVE JULY 12, 1998**
> ----------
> From: L. Dale Patterson[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, May 17, 1999 10:52 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list EAD
> Subject: XML, XSL and HELP!
>
> I could use some direction. I've been trying to follow the discussion on
> the XML version of the EAD. What I'm confused about is the type of style
> sheet to cause the instance to display in a presentable fashion in IE 5.0
> We have made the modifications to the sgml instance and the document
> displays in IE 5.0, complete with tags which expand and collapse.
>
> In looking at the EAD help pages I came across the following :
> XSL is integrated into the Microsoft XML processor which is part
> of
> Internet Explorer 5.
> It transforms XML into HTML, which is then displayed using CSS; it
> does not
> implement FOs.
> This is from: http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/#browsers
>
> So here are my questions. Do we need to create an xsl AND a css
> stylesheet
> in order to get a formated display? Can we just use css to create a
> formated display (by formatted I'm thinking of the type of style sheet
> we've creatd in Panorama). If we need xsl then can some one recommend an
> xsl program which well help up create the necessary style sheet? From the
> EAD help site I've found several packages for css creation which we could
> use.
>
> Thanks for any comments or suggestions.
>
>
>
> L. Dale Patterson email: [log in to unmask]
> Archivist Voice: 973-408-3189
> United Methodist Church Archives FAX: 973-408-3909
> Madison, New Jersey 07940 Web site: http://www.gcah.org
>
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