Hi guys,

Short story:

Where to put the css which is needed by java macros (e.g. the columns 
layouting of the container macro)

1/ in colibri.css
2/ in a .css included on demand by the macro
a) from platform resources (using ssfx)
b) from the jar (using ssrx)
c) from an object in a page with ssx
3/ refactor the skin concept and create a 'platform css' to store all 
these and not be affected by skin customization.

Long story:

I can see I've caused the web standards tests to fail for the trunk 
(http://hudson.xwiki.org/job/xwiki-product-enterprise-tests/org.xwiki.enterprise$xwiki-enterprise-test-webstandards/252/testReport/)
 
because of the inline style attributes used by the columns layout of the 
container, whijch is now used on the main page.

Now, I would like us to agree about where to store the styles needed by 
the java macros to work right, such as the container macro with columns 
layout. The options I see are:

1/ as until today (e.g. box macro, warning, error, info, etc), in 
colibri.css/toucan.css/otherskinwehave.css. I don't like this solution 
too much because it means that when another skin is used, things won't 
work anymore unless the person writing the new skin takes care of 
copying all these "things that must be there". The advantage of this is 
having a single .css file to load on page load, the disadvantage being 
that their css is loaded on all pages, regardless of it being used or not.

2/ loading of the styles on demand, each macro loads its style when it 
needs it
a) from a .css file located in the platform resources, which the macro 
has to include using the ssfx plugin when is executed -- much like a 
wiki macro would to with a ssx.
b) from a .css file located in the macro archive (using ssrx), which the 
macro includes when executed.
c) from a ssx page

c) has the advantage of being very very much more easy to change than a) 
and finally than b) which is the hardest to customize. But on the other 
side c) means the java macro depends on a page, which is not that good. 
Note that "cascading" customization is possible for all these choices 
(adding an extra css with rules to overwrite the rules in the default 
css for the macro) and that in my view, it's enough, since the idea is 
that the layout should be preserved no matter what (e.g. a user might 
want to add a red border to the columns, but not make the columns 
display as two paragraphs instead of two columns).

3/ refactoring the whole skin thing and creating a "platform" css, which 
contains things that should work regardless of the skin used. Pros: it's 
an adaptation of the current approach (1/), that solves the problem. 
Cons: takes longer, might be very hard to separate what's platform and 
what's skin.

These being said, I think I prefer 2/ if 3/ is not realistic, and for 
the container macro at least, I would prefer to implement 2b).

Thanks,
Anca
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