John L. Clark wrote: > What I would like to be able to do is extend previously existing XXE > stylesheets using new stylesheets without having to copy the stylesheets > to be extended[0] into a known location. I currently have an extension > to the DocBook DTD (for Norman Walsh's literate programming information > set), and in order to style it I have copied the XXE-distributed > stylesheets into a user configuration directory, from which I can create > a separate stylesheet which imports these to extend them. I don't know > if this would be possible, but it would be nice to have a configuration > item which would enable you to apply a given stylesheet after other > stylesheets have been applied. Perhaps the following would work: > > <mergecss > with = name of previously existing stylesheet > location = anyURI, pointing to the additional stylesheet > system = boolean : false, having the same semantics as > the same attribute on the include > configuration item > /> > > Thoughts? Is there a better way to achieve what I'm trying to > accomplish? I can't think of any way that user configuration > stylesheets can a priori know what the filenames of system stylesheets > might be.
Currently, we don't have a clean solution to this problem. <mergecss> may be the solution, but we need to think about it. For now, we recommend what follows: [1] Create your own custom CSS style sheet (example: literate_docbook.css) in the user configuration directory or in a system wide configuration directory different from XXE configuration directory. [2] First line of literate_docbook.css should be: --- @import url(<XXE_install_dir>/config/docbook/css/docbook.css); --- (Yes, you explicitly need to know where XXE has been installed. That's why this solution is not clean.) > [0] With respect to the stylesheets (and other configuration files) > distributed with XXE, what are our (that is, XXE users') rights? I > wasn't really clear on how the license provided with XXE applies to > these "exists-as-source" items, such as the CSS files for the DocBook > configuration. For example, can I copy them (as above) in order to > extend them? Can I modify them directly? Can I distribute > modifications, or patches? All the CSS style sheets (not the XSLT style sheets which are "copyright Norman Walsh") are part of the XXE distribution and therefore, the Standard Edition License applies to them too: "Licensee may customize the Software by means of configuration files, either for personal use or for corporate use inside an organization." A CSS style sheet is a kind of configuration file. This means that you can copy, modify, distribute, etc, (in fact, do anything you want) to the CSS style sheets but inside your organization. If this is not sufficient for you, explain us your project and we may consider changing the license terms for configuration files.
