css question

Michael Hamm · Oct 13, 2004

I'd appreciate any help anyone could provide in this matter.

Please see http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/rss.xml . There's an <em>
element in there, which should, by my reckoning, show up italicized in my
Web browser (IE6), but doesn't. I assume that I did something wrong
(although problems with IE are, in general, not unheard-of); can someone
please tell me what it is I did wrong?

Some more info (which you can figure out yourself by reading the
documents): rss.xml calls http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/rss.xsl which, in
turn, has a <link rel="stylesheet"/> element (which my UA uses) and a
<style> element (which my UA does not seem to use: it's the <style>
element that says <em>s should be italicized).

As I say, I'd appreciate any help.

Michael Hamm
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
(e-mail address removed) Standard disclaimers:
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html

Joris Gillis · Oct 13, 2004

Hi,

The problem here is the '<xsl:value-of select="description" />': it
returns the concatenation of all text descendants of the 'description
node'. All other nodes like 'em' are ignored.
You could use '<xsl:copy-of select="description" />' to copy all nodes
including 'em'.
(or you could use '<xsl:apply-templates/>')

Also note that you're not generating html.
You don't specify the output type and the generated document itself is not
valid (X)html.
In this case the behaviour of a browser is not defined, so it is not
unlikely to see css rules not being applied.

the stylesheet looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl

utput method="html"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="basic.css" type="text/css" />
<style type="text/css">
em{font-style:italic}
em em{font-style:normal}
em em em{font-style:italic}
strong{font-weight:bolder}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<xsl:apply-templates select="//rss/channel"/>
</body></html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="channel">

<title><xsl:value-of select="title" /></title>
<h1><xsl:value-of select="title" /></h1>
<p><xsl:value-of select="description" /></p>
<xsl:for-each select="item">
<div>
<h2><xsl:value-of select="title" /></h2>
<address><xsl:value-of select="pubDate" /></address>
<p><xsl:copy-of select="description"/></p>
</div>
</xsl:for-each>
<address><a><xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of select="link" />
</xsl:attribute><xsl:value-of select="copyright" /></a></address>
</xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>

regards,

Andy Dingley · Oct 13, 2004

There's an <em> element in there,

There is indeed. There isn't an <em> in RSS.

I suggest reading this
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss

Michael Hamm · Oct 14, 2004

There is indeed. There isn't an <em> in RSS.

I didn't refer to any DTD, so there's an anything-I-want in RSS. As long
as I tell the UA what to do (which I thought I did, using CSS), that
should suffice, no?

I suggest reading this
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss

I read it (not very carefully. That is, I read through all the text, but
not all the examples, and none of the external citations). I fail to see
its relevance.

Michael Hamm
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
(e-mail address removed) Standard disclaimers:
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html

Michael Hamm · Oct 14, 2004

The problem here is the '<xsl:value-of select="description" />': it
returns the concatenation of all text descendants of the 'description
node'. All other nodes like 'em' are ignored.
You could use '<xsl:copy-of select="description" />' to copy all nodes
including 'em'.

Thanks very much; I've fixed it per your suggestion (this first one that I
quoted), and all seems well.

Also note that you're not generating html.
You don't specify the output type and the generated document itself is
not valid (X)html.
In this case the behaviour of a browser is not defined, so it is not
unlikely to see css rules not being applied.

Every browser under the sun knows what to do with a page that looks like
<title>foo</title><h1>bar</h1><p>baz</p>
which is what I generate. The only problem, I guess, is that I don't
specify a MIME type for the generated page. (Browsers faced with
<title>foo</title><h1>bar</h1><p>baz</p>
in a page served with MIME type text/plain will generally not display it
as an HTML page.) So perhaps I'd better, as you suggest, use

<xslutput method="html"/>

Thanks again for your help.

Michael Hamm
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
(e-mail address removed) Standard disclaimers:
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html

Andy Dingley · Oct 14, 2004

I didn't refer to any DTD, so there's an anything-I-want in RSS.

No there isn't. There might be, but then it stops being valid RSS.

As long
as I tell the UA what to do (which I thought I did, using CSS), that
should suffice, no?

As Joris has already said, then the "simple" problem was evaluating
<description> as text, not as a node-set.

As a general rule, it's (sadly) not practical to process RSS with pure
XSLT - or at least not to process embedded HTML markup in RSS with it.

RSS is riven with problems, version incompatibilities and
contradictory specifications. Mny of these are centred on how to
represent embedded HTML markup. The reference is one of the clearest
summaries of this sorry mess.

You can't generate RSS by blindly embedding chunks of literal HTML
into it, as your example did. If you try it, your code will barf when
it receives é or <br> (and a few others). If you're generating
it yourself, then you might be able to limit the content to a balanced
XML fragment (as your example was) which is rather more workable.
This might even work for you, but don't fool yourself that it's valid
RSS, or that other consumers will be happy to accept it.

xsl:sort select matches more than one	0	Nov 15, 2006
How to have two html audio players on one page?	0	May 3, 2022
function returning a string?	2	Feb 24, 2005
[XSLT] averaging	2	Dec 28, 2005
Need assistance finetuning HTML, CSS, Javascript - sticky header issue	3	Feb 25, 2022
Working on mobile css menu with plenty of frustration!	2	Dec 29, 2022
I need help fixing my website	2	Oct 15, 2023
bookmarklet: tooltips on links	1	Jan 19, 2004

css question

Michael Hamm

Joris Gillis

Andy Dingley

Michael Hamm

Michael Hamm

Andy Dingley

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

Members online

Forum statistics

Latest Threads