docbook: Updated XSL Stylesheets
Subject:
Re: Updated XSL Stylesheets
From:
David Horton ####@####.####
Date:
2 Jul 2003 01:17:30 -0000
Message-Id: <3F023428.60205@megsinet.net>
Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 02:15:33PM -0700, Bob Stayton wrote:
>
>>You are correct, it is not outputting HTML.
>>I haven't used these stylesheets, but
>>the "Making portait pages ..." messages indicates
>>it is outputting XSL-FO. Perhaps changing
>>the "/fo/" in the path to "/html/" would fix it,
>>but I don't know why the filename itself includes
>>"html" if it is putting out FO.
>
>
> Yup, I put the files into the wrong directory. :/ Fixed now, thanks!!
>
> Some comments on the output of HTML files:
> - the page doesn't validate as HTML or as XHTML (as per the correct
> directory). The DOCTYPE is missing from the HTML version so
> validator.w3.org doesn't even bother trying. For the XHTML version
> there are namespaces put into elements that don't allow them.
> - output looks great in lynx
> - output in firebird-mozilla has a weird character after section
> numbers and before the text. It's a capital A with a circonflex
> (hat) accent. Also visible in the plain text output -- perhaps the
> character encoding meta information is incorrect?
> - same complaints as before re. new lines, but it's much better this
> time.
> - there are *many* deprecated elements being used. This is a Bad Thing
> in my opinion. A quick glance shows: b, tt and i
> - there is still some HTML which could be stripped out, I think. For
> example: <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">
> <a id="id2800871"></a>8.1.? Unpack</h3></div></div><div>
> What are the extra <div>s for?
> - again: extra HTML around:
> <b class="command">make <i class="parameter"><tt>menuconfig</tt></i></b>
> why not just call it <span class="parameter"> and use CSS to style
> the font to a monospaced font?
> - <div class="blockquote"><table border="0" width="100%"
> cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="blockquote" summary="Block
> quote">
> Argh!! Why not just use the HTML element "blockquote"?
> - <div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
> are sections some times different languages than the parent
> document? I don't think this is necessary as my guess is that
> documents are always written in a single document. Why not simply
> put the language in the <html> start tag and be done with it?
>
> I haven't worked a lot with XSLT so maybe the problems are in nwalsh's
> files, and maybe they're in the revised tldp files? Being an HTML snob I
> would not be happy with this output based on the work that I put into (1)
> the original HTML document I wrote (2) the amount of effort I put into
> converting my HTML file into docbook.
>
> But those are just one person's comments. :)
>
> emma
>
Emma,
I agree with you 100% on the messy HTML output and use of depreciated
tags. I'm still in the HTML snob rehab clinic myself. :^) I really
don't know how much of the sloppiness is due to the tldp-xsl
customizations and how much of it stems from the original docbook-xsl
stylesheets. Right now I'm at the bottom of a steep XSLT learning curve.
Some day soon I would like to process the same Docbook XML document
using both Norman Walsh's docbook-xsl and the tldp-xsl customizations
and then put the html outputs through a validator. This should
determine which one is causing the HTML sloppiness. If you have the
time and inclination to do this and can send me your findings it would
be appreciated. If it turns out that the docbook-xsl stylesheets are
the cause I would suggest that we address our concerns to the people
maintaining them.
In the end I'd love to see these stylesheets be able to turn out nice
looking valid HTML 4.0, but right now I'm just happy to see text other
than Saxon's error messages.
Dave
