RE: several messages

> From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch]
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 7:56 AM
> This has never been a problem with HTML as far as I am aware; 
> why would
> it suddenly become a problem with XML?
It's suddenly a problem with XML because there are suddenly two different
types of stylesheets: transforming and layout. A UA HAS to know which so
that it can incrementally display the page correctly.

> If I have a CGI script which sniffs for the UA string and 
> returns XSL for
> IE5, CSS for Mozilla and JSSS for Nav4, there is no way I 
> could link to it
> using a specific MIME type. Ergo, the "type"  pseudo-attribute, which
> being a useful optimisation for many UAs, cannot be a required
> pseudo-attribute in the real world.
> 
That's a useful CGI. I see your point, and, of course, an authoring tool
that needs it can always insert the type attribute, but the type attribute
is still very useful to UAs that want to start displaying the page before it
is completely downloaded. The type attribute should be strongly recommended
in the spec.
I'd be interested to see a page you've used this CGI on. Usually, when you
need XSLT at all, CSS alone is useless.

On the original problem, has any consensus been reached?

Jeffrey Yasskin

Received on Friday, 29 June 2001 09:54:07 UTC