I want to defend the stylesheet writers:
XSLT is, IMO, a functional programming language based largely on
pattern matching. The source document trees can take many different
forms and contain a variety of structures, while there are also many
different output forms (for starters: fo, html/xhtml single/chunked).
So, in this XSLT language, the stylesheet writers have to write a
multi-input multi-output program and manage all the interactions of
their transformations. This is not so easy to do, especially in one's
spare time.
I think we should give them slack. Are the embedded tables killing us?
No. Is the output highly accessible already? Yes.
On 5/15/07, Nicolas RAINARD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dave Pawson wrote:
Nicolas RAINARD wrote:
This is why I spent a whole day to search how I could resolve this. I used
the 5.0 XSLT and it seems it processes pretty much as the 4.x do. I had a
glimpse in the XSLT2 snapshot, and I didn't find a XHTML output in this
release. Maybe is it still automatically generated from the HTML one? I am
not sure it is the best way, for transitional HTML and strict XHTML have few
things in common.
Rather than aiming for valid XHTML why not check your output for
accessibility, then come back with questions?
Moreover, the QandAset is rendered with definition lists (<dl></dl>)
instead of ordered lists (<ol></ol>), which makes me puzzled...
What's wrong with DL? There are no accessibility issues there?
The use of a table within a DL is unecessary though.
Maybe am I wrong and then, could you tell me how I can get a "pure",
table-less output?
You need to define 'pure'.
You mentioned accessibility. Is that your goal?
My goal is not only accessibility (I think these results are tolerably well
accessible). What should be a common goal is to get a semantically correct,
and elegant, output.
For example, tables should be used only to present tabular data and not for
the layout (but it seems everybody agrees with that).
Definition lists should be used to present... lists of definitions.
Here is an equivalence:
DocBook
<glossdiv>
<glossentry>
<glossterm>
Definition term 1
</glossterm>
<glossdef>
Definition data 1
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<glossentry>
<glossterm>
Definition term 2
</glossterm>
<glossdef>
Definition data 2
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
</glossdiv>
could be transformed to:
XHTML
<dl class="glossary">
<dt id="term01">
Definition term 1
</dt>
<dd>
Definition data 1
</dd>
<dt id="term02">
Definition term 2
</dt>
<dd>
Definition data 2
</dd>
</dl>
DocBook
<qandaset>
<qandaentry>
<question>
FAQ question 1
</question>
<answer>
FAQ answer 1
</answer>
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
<question>
FAQ question 2
</question>
<answer>
FAQ answer 2
</answer>
</qandaentry>
</qandaset>
could be transformed to:
XHTML
<ol class="qandaset">
<li id="qandaentry01">
<p class="question">
FAQ question 1
</p>
<p class="answer">
FAQ answer 1
</p>
</li>
<li id="qandaentry02">
<p class="question">
FAQ question 2
</p>
<p class="answer">
FAQ answer 2
</p>
</li>
</ol>
As you can see, there is no more need for tables, as well as hard-coded
sections numbers, since they are automatically generated by the browser (and
it is possible to use a <ul> instead if we don't want automatic numbering).
Of course, DocBook is much more detailed, but it is considerably easier to
strip some details than the reverse. Both DocBook and XHTML are XML flavors
and they share many semantical structures, so it should be fairly easy to
better preserve these structures. What are markups in DocBook can be
transformed as attributes in XHTML to preserve the semantical meaning and
give the required hooks for CSS presentation. In fact, it is much easier
than transforming to "old-fashioned" HTML with tables layout.
I'll have a look at the LFS XHTML XSLT (proposed by M. Canales), and see if
they comply with such a state of mind.
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