Re: Associating DSSSL style sheets with documents

Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Thu, 6 Mar 1997 08:58:10 -0500

| Content-Type: text/xml; stylesheet=foo.dsl
|
| This is only going to work in the context of HTTP.

This is not going to work if you have multiple stylesheets associated
with a document unless you use multipart MIME bodies, and then we're
right back to MIME-SGML. I favor Don's proposal because it had
the right semantics for both HTTP, amd email (ie. it could pull or
push).

| The type of the stylesheet could be indicated by its Content-Type, and
| the client could use content-type negotiation to ensure it gets the
| kind of stylesheet it can handle. Somebody should probably register a
| MIME content-type for DSSSL style sheets as well.

Content negotiation only takes you so far, and is HTTP specific *and*
spottily implemented. It also only allows you to negotiate on the
*type* of the resource, and a few other things. It does not help if
you have multiple resources each of which are of equivalent quality
*and* that the user may like to choose between.