Re: Re: SEUL: seul-pub main page done

[Ian Bicking <bickiia@earlham.edu>]

On Sun, Dec 05, 1999 at 10:22:09PM +0000, Doug Loss wrote:
> I was wondering if setting up a style sheet to do the easy stuff that pretty
> much all CSS-capable browsers get right would be a good idea when it comes to
> giving SEUL a standard "look."  Agree with me, tell me I'm wrong; just give good
> arguments.

I like stylesheets in theory, but I'm not sure if they are all that great
in practice.  Both Netscape and IE have spotty support, particularly in
older versions.  And their support doesn't entirely overlap.  Lynx, of
course, doesn't support any of it, though little formatting is really
possible on Lynx (though it does obey <center>, for instance, as well as
<b>, <i>, and other simple formatting).

Stylesheets are the only thing that can do certain operations -- like
fully justified text.  But those usually aren't anything terribly
important (or else they would have been implemented earlier in straight
HTML).

I guess there's not a whole lot of formatting in the SEUL pages at this
point that shouldn't have an HTML counterpart, and that counterpart
should probably be used because it's more reliable from the client side
than CSS (even if it's harder from the maintenance side).  Also, a
seperate CSS file requires a seperate HTTP request be completed before
the page renders.

Shouldn't sdoc be able to deal with these issues already?  I mean,
can't the basic elements of the pages be abstracted?


-- 
Ian Bicking         / 4869 N. Talman Ave. Apt. G, Chicago, IL 60625
bickiia@earlham.edu / http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~bickiia