About the Fromat property proposal

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

I got some interesting challenge in the XSL group about the "format"
property added in the style sheet processing instruction. This discussion
conducted to a modification of the original proposal in order that it would
be more compliant with actual specs. The actual XML style sheet processing
instruction proposed by James Clark at W3 contains some properties like:

hRef = <URI>
media = <sub property,...,>
type = <Content type>

The discussion conducted to change the proposal to use instead the media
property and specify the output format as a sub property as in the example
below:

a) <?xml-stylesheet type="text/dsssl" href="myURI" media="screen, rtf"?> or
b) <?xml-stylesheet type="text/dsssl" href="../common/myscript.dsl"
media="screen, sgml"?> or
c) <?xml-stylesheet type="text/dsssl" href="mscript.dsl" media="print,
rtf"?>

The first two processing instruction would let the XML document handler to
render the document on the screen (former in rtf format and the latter in
sgml format)and the last one to print the document in rtf format. So
concretely speaking, a double click on a XML document containing that PI
would:

a) transform the document into rtf and show it on the screen
b) transform the document into sgml and display it on the screen
c) transform the document into rtf and print it.

What are your comments on this proposal? Do you find this modification
better than the last one? Let me know your comments on this list, like we
did in the XSL list for the same proposal.

here is the spec extract form the HTML 4.0 that the new proposal for XML
style sheet refer to for property definitions
------------------------------------------------------
6.13 Media descriptors
The following is a list of recognized media descriptors ( %MediaDesc in the
DTD).

screen
Intended for non-paged computer screens.
tty
Intended for media using a fixed-pitch character grid, such as teletypes,
terminals, or portable devices with limited display capabilities.
tv
Intended for television-type devices (low resolution, color, limited
scrollability).
projection
Intended for projectors.
handheld
Intended for handheld devices (small screen, monochrome, bitmapped graphics,
limited bandwidth).
print
Intended for paged, opaque material and for documents viewed on screen in
print preview mode.
braille
Intended for braille tactile feedback devices.
aural
Intended for speech synthesizers.
all
Suitable for all devices.
Future versions of HTML may introduce new values and may allow parameterized
values. To facilitate the introduction of these extensions, conforming user
agents must be able to parse the media attribute value as follows:

The value is a comma-separated list of entries. For example,
media="screen, 3d-glasses, print and resolution > 90dpi"

is mapped to:

"screen"
"3d-glasses"
"print and resolution > 90dpi

Each entry is truncated just before the first character that isn't a US
ASCII letter [a-zA-Z] (Unicode decimal 65-90, 97-122), digit [0-9] (Unicode
hex 30-39), or hyphen (45). In the example, this gives:
"screen"
"3d-glasses"
"print"

A case-sensitive match is then made with the set of media types defined
above. User agents may ignore entries that don't match. In the example we
are left with screen and print
----------------------------

Regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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