Mike Maxwell wrote: > I know it's possible (and easy!) to convert a DocBook file to XHTML > using the Professional version of XXE. However, my (mis?)understanding > was that I should also be able to attach a CSS to a DocBook file (via > the <?xml-stylesheet ... ?> processing command) and display it directly > in an internet browser. (And I was thinking that the syntax used for > CSS extensions, as described in chapters 3 and 4 of the CSS Support > Guide, would be ignored by the browser.) > > However, I can't make this work, at least not with the css's supplied > with XXE. That is, I used the following line (here wrapped): > > <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="file:/C:/Program > Files/XMLmind_XML_Editor/addon/config/docbook/css/docbook.css"?> > > But both FireFox and Internet Explorer choke on the '/*...*/' style > comments in XMLmind_XML_Editor/addon/config/docbook/css/docbook.css.
No, this cannot be true. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/syndata.html#comments --- Comments begin with the characters "/*" and end with the characters "*/". They may occur anywhere between tokens, and their contents have no influence on the rendering. Comments may not be nested. --- However, FireFox and Internet Explorer almost certainly choke on dozen other rules and properties contained in docbook.css. > I'm guessing my understanding was simply wrong, that the CSS's which > ship with XXE are tailored to be used only by XXE. Yes, that's true for the DocBook CSS style sheets. However we didn't repeat that mistake for DITA. In the DITA CSS style sheets, everything which is specific to XXE is enclosed in "@media XMLmind-XML-Editor {}" blocks. See http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/csssupport/gencontentext.html After doing this, we tested the DITA CSS style sheets with IE, Mozilla, Opera. In all cases, the result was *pathetic*. (Web browsers are excellent at supporting most CSS features but are very bad at supporting other, rarely used on the Web but critical for XXE, features.) > If that is true, are > there other CSS's which allow raw DocBook files to be viewed in more or > less their formatted form in Internet browsers? (I realize that last > question is outside the scope of this mailing list...) Just note that writing an acceptable CSS for DocBook took us more than 10 days of work, 10 hours a day. DocBook has more than 400 elements, and many of them are obscure (e.g. the "msg*" elements -- http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/msg.html).
