Syndicating CSS?

[Phil Wolff <pwolff@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Something came up on this list that bothers me. Syndication (RSS for now, 
Atom next) depends on separating formatting from content. A lump of html is 
thrown into an xml wrapper and passed along.

What happens to the original style sheets and the styled treatment of the 
post? Newsreaders today never know about them (a page's header isn't 
syndicated), so all custom class attributes are ignored.

This may be more important with Atom. With extensibility, we will syndicate 
more highly structured content (xml'ized invoices, recipes, sports scores, 
etc) that require more sophisticated help in layout and presentation. Much 
content depends on visual structure for meaning and context, often provided 
by html tables now, more to be provided through style sheets. Syndication 
shouldn't compel loss of meaning. What to do?

Two strategies come to mind.

(a) Include the urls for relevant style sheets with each syndicated post. 
Let the newsreaders parse the post for styles they want to use, and 
incorporate by reference.  A nice thing here is that as a style sheet is 
updated, content already delivered is updated too.  or

(b) Pre-process the html before syndication. The publisher changes style 
sheet references into inline CSS, then writes out the RSS file.

I asked Jesse James Garrett for his advice on this. He said:
<snip>

I'd advocate a variant of (a):

- Encourage publishers to create a separate stylesheet unique to their 
syndicated content, rather than having aggregators pull styles from the 
stylesheets for the corresponding Web sites. (Maybe a media="feed" 
attribute on the stylesheet link could indicate this.)

- Specify the stylesheet URL at the feed level. This cuts down on the 
potential redundant data in the feed.

- Support cascading. Allow post-level and inline CSS.

(b) is far less attractive. It'll bloat the feeds, and it'll be a big 
hassle for the publishers to support.

</snip>

Am I understanding the problem? Are there other approaches I haven't 
considered? Does strategy (a) or (b) come to mind as the superior approach?

p.s. would my use of <snip></snip> make a feed invalid?



Philip Wolff
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