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Simon Rönnqvist | 4 Mar 2005 02:26
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How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

   Hi!

* * * BACKGROUND * * *
For my thesis work I'm looking for a CMS along with a WYSIWYG that  
would support separation of content from presentation (CSS) to the best  
possible degree. BxCMS and Lenya are my candidates for the CMS but at  
least the Bitflux Editor seems to be a clear winner when it comes to  
the WYSIWYG-editor. (Or would even Mozile be good for the job?)  
Therefore I'd like to evaluate the Bitflux Editor's (and possibly  
Mozile's) abilities for separation of content and presentation. If  
you'd be very interested in this evaluation I could consider writing  
the thesis in English, otherwise I might stick to my mother's thounge  
Swedish. :-) Do you have any comments or thoughts about these things?

* * * TO THE POINT * * *
One thing which I at this point think seems to be missing from the  
Bitflux Editor (and Mozile) is an ability to edit external  
CSS-properties. :-) It'd be great if one for example could give an  
image a specific ID and then in the separate CSS float that element  
right or left. To my present understanding (correct me if I'm wrong)  
I'd have to specify a class i.e. called left or right, which  
semantically wouldn't make any sense. Then I might just as well specify  
a style="float: ..." attribute instead, and then the separation of  
content and style would have failed at that point. (One could of course  
argue wether there's a need for total separation or not, but let's say  
there is. This img floating is just an example.)

Basically what I'd be looking for is an ability to assign ID:s and  
classes to elements and then to make certain predefined css-properties  
apply to the ID:s or classes of choise. One could build a separate
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Christian Stocker | 4 Mar 2005 04:05
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Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?


Hi Simon

I'm on vacation until next monday in a week. I'm happy to answer your
questions thoroughly but you have to wait until then ;)

chregu

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Simon Rönnqvist wrote:

>    Hi!
>
> * * * BACKGROUND * * *
> For my thesis work I'm looking for a CMS along with a WYSIWYG that
> would support separation of content from presentation (CSS) to the best
> possible degree. BxCMS and Lenya are my candidates for the CMS but at
> least the Bitflux Editor seems to be a clear winner when it comes to
> the WYSIWYG-editor. (Or would even Mozile be good for the job?)
> Therefore I'd like to evaluate the Bitflux Editor's (and possibly
> Mozile's) abilities for separation of content and presentation. If
> you'd be very interested in this evaluation I could consider writing
> the thesis in English, otherwise I might stick to my mother's thounge
> Swedish. :-) Do you have any comments or thoughts about these things?
>
> * * * TO THE POINT * * *
> One thing which I at this point think seems to be missing from the
> Bitflux Editor (and Mozile) is an ability to edit external
> CSS-properties. :-) It'd be great if one for example could give an
> image a specific ID and then in the separate CSS float that element
> right or left. To my present understanding (correct me if I'm wrong)
(Continue reading)

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Simon Rönnqvist | 4 Mar 2005 09:04
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Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

   Hi!

I look forward to hearing your answers... But as much as that I'd like 
to open up a general discussion on developing a WYSIWYG-editor (and 
CMS) with total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation 
(CSS). Something like a bit of a brainstorming session would be nice, 
so anybody's comments are of interest. So the general questions could 
be: What kind of needs are there for a total separation of content and 
presentation? and more importantly; How could this be achieved?

   -Simon

On Mar 4, 2005, at 05:05, Christian Stocker wrote:

>
> Hi Simon
>
>
> I'm on vacation until next monday in a week. I'm happy to answer your
> questions thoroughly but you have to wait until then ;)
>
> chregu
>
> On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Simon Rönnqvist wrote:
>
>>    Hi!
>>
>> * * * BACKGROUND * * *
>> For my thesis work I'm looking for a CMS along with a WYSIWYG that
>> would support separation of content from presentation (CSS) to the
(Continue reading)

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DrSlump | 4 Mar 2005 10:06

Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

Simon Rönnqvist wrote:

> * * * TO THE POINT * * *
> One thing which I at this point think seems to be missing from the  
> Bitflux Editor (and Mozile) is an ability to edit external  
> CSS-properties. :-) It'd be great if one for example could give an  
> image a specific ID and then in the separate CSS float that element  
> right or left. To my present understanding (correct me if I'm wrong)  
> I'd have to specify a class i.e. called left or right, which  
> semantically wouldn't make any sense. Then I might just as well 
> specify  a style="float: ..." attribute instead, and then the 
> separation of  content and style would have failed at that point. (One 
> could of course  argue wether there's a need for total separation or 
> not, but let's say  there is. This img floating is just an example.)
>
> Basically what I'd be looking for is an ability to assign ID:s and  
> classes to elements and then to make certain predefined 
> css-properties  apply to the ID:s or classes of choise. One could 
> build a separate  CSS-editor which could be used with any WYSIWYG 
> xhtml/xml editor that  would allow the user to define class and id 
> attributes for the  elements. But a better idea would be to integrate 
> the CSS-editor with  the WYSIWYG so that all style related data (CSS) 
> would automatically be  separated from the markup (html/xml) without 
> the user even having to  know about it.

Hi,

With separation of style and contents there is a really nice side 
effect, contents are managed by an editor (or non technical user) and 
style is defined by a designer. Allowing the 'editor' to define custom
(Continue reading)

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Simon Rönnqvist | 4 Mar 2005 10:40
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Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

   Hi!

You brought up a good point.

I actually now already started to plan a simple PHP-based custom 
stylesheet generator, let's call it a CSS Management System (CSSMS). It 
should be easily integratable (and work like an almost invisible 
module) with different WYSIWYG editors but also work as a standalone 
PHP-script.

The first thing I had to start thinking about however was how the 
designer would be able to define rules for what the editor could do.
I think some kind of easy to understand XML-file could define something 
like:
<rule>
   <context>div#main img</context>
   <context>p.editable</context>
   <float>
     <value>right</value>
     <value>left</value>
   </float>
</rule>

<rule>
   <context>*</context>
   <context><not>div#main</not></context>
   <text-align>
     <value>justify</value>
     <value>left</value>
   </text-align>
(Continue reading)

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DrSlump | 4 Mar 2005 15:41

Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

Simon Rönnqvist wrote:

>   Hi!
>
> You brought up a good point.
>
> I actually now already started to plan a simple PHP-based custom 
> stylesheet generator, let's call it a CSS Management System (CSSMS). 
> It should be easily integratable (and work like an almost invisible 
> module) with different WYSIWYG editors but also work as a standalone 
> PHP-script.
>
> The first thing I had to start thinking about however was how the 
> designer would be able to define rules for what the editor could do.
> I think some kind of easy to understand XML-file could define 
> something like:
> <rule>
>   <context>div#main img</context>
>   <context>p.editable</context>
>   <float>
>     <value>right</value>
>     <value>left</value>
>   </float>
> </rule>
>
> <rule>
>   <context>*</context>
>   <context><not>div#main</not></context>
>   <text-align>
>     <value>justify</value>
(Continue reading)

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Simon Rönnqvist | 4 Mar 2005 23:01
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Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

On Mar 4, 2005, at 16:41, DrSlump wrote:

   Hi!

I don't have any experiance with XPath, but after looking a little in a 
book I think I understood your example.
Anyway I don't think it would have the same functionality as the XML i 
proposed, correct me if I'm wrong. (Sorry for now explaining my example 
properly.)

The thing I described would work like this:
The first rule would allow the editor to assign the a "float: right" or 
"float: left" property to either "div#main img" or "p.editable".
The second rule would allow the editor to assign "text-align: justify" 
or "text-align: left" and/or "font-family: serif" or "font-family: 
sans-serif" to any (*) property but not "div#main".
So how I imagined it could look for the editor would be that he/she 
would be offered a set of choises for each property, i.e. in a popup 
menu.

I don't know if it'd make things any better to have a CSS-kind of 
syntax, because it'd require some new way of thinking anyway. Maybe an 
XML-format would be even less confusing because of that. It could be a 
bit easier to grasp the CSS-like syntax, but on the other hand the 
performance could be suffering and the coding would be more complicated 
(I guess I'd have to start playing with them regular expressions :-).

When I wrote that it'd be for designers I didn't expect it to be for 
code-fearing designers, such designers can't work with templating and 
stuff associated with a CMS anyway.
(Continue reading)

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DrSlump | 5 Mar 2005 01:05

Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

Hi,

Now I see what you mean, you want to 'attach' css properties to elements 
instead of selectors and classes. I never needed or even thought about 
such functionality, I guess it's too fine-grained and IMHO 95% of the 
time the same can be accomplished with properly designed css stylesheets.
Even if you allow to define custom css properties to an element, based 
on some restriction rules, you'll need create a css file with those 
properties classes or add them as inline styles (not so good).
I still think that a best aproach would be to let the designer add some 
extra css rules to allow the editor some margin of decission on the 
final result's design. The only thing needed is some mechanism to 
present the editor valid css classes for the current element, as 
described in my previous mail.

Back to your idea, I think the original xml based representation of the 
rules makes more sense and even if more verbose is clearer than css like 
syntax.

By the way, you'll have to use xpath (doing it by regexp could be much 
slower and error prone) to check which properties can be used for the 
current element.

ciao, Iván

> On Mar 4, 2005, at 16:41, DrSlump wrote:
>
>   Hi!
>
> I don't have any experiance with XPath, but after looking a little in
(Continue reading)

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Simon Rönnqvist | 5 Mar 2005 01:44
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Re: How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with the Bitflux Editor (or Mozile)?

On Mar 5, 2005, at 02:05, DrSlump wrote:

   Hi!

Now you got me kind of right!

> Now I see what you mean, you want to 'attach' css properties to 
> elements instead of selectors and classes. I never needed or even 
> thought about such functionality, I guess it's too fine-grained and 
> IMHO 95% of the time the same can be accomplished with properly 
> designed css stylesheets.

   Let's cite my original post:
"One thing which I at this point think seems to be missing from the 
Bitflux Editor (and Mozile) is an ability to edit external 
CSS-properties. :-) It'd be great if one for example could give an 
image a specific ID and then in the separate CSS float that element 
right or left. To my present understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) 
I'd have to specify a class i.e. called left or right, which 
semantically wouldn't make any sense. Then I might just as well specify 
a style="float: ..." attribute instead, and then the separation of 
content and style would have failed at that point. (One could of course 
argue wether there's a need for total separation or not, but let's say 
there is. This img floating is just an example.)"

So in this example of mine I wouldn't like to use inline styles, but 
that wouldn't be any worse than assigning styles called floatLeft or 
floatRight. What I'd like to have would be good semantics and total 
separation of content and style.
(Continue reading)

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Simon Rönnqvist | 6 Mar 2005 01:03
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Re: [Mozile] How could total separation of content (xhtml/xml) and presentation (CSS) be achieved with Mozile?

On Mar 5, 2005, at 22:06, James A.Overton wrote:

   Hi!

> 	Here are my thoughts on the matter.
> 	Bitflux has different goals than Mozile. Mozile would work well for a  
> front end to a CMS, but you would have to figure out the back end  
> yourself. Bitflux covers both these bases.

   I think we need to make e difference between Bitflux CMS and Bitflux  
Editor. The Bitflux Editor is available separately and can also be  
found in other CMS like Apache Lenya for instance. Bitflux CMS consists  
of the PHP-based Cocoon-inspired XML-framework Popoon which works as a  
back-end for the actual Bitflux CMS. And then we have the Bitflux  
editor as a front-end when editing content. I think the Bitflux editor  
kind of fills the same functionality as the "server-side" version of  
Mozile, because it isn't installed as a browser plug-in. Bitflux Editor  
is also partly built on Mozile and seems quite a bit heavier. (Correct  
me if I got something wrong.)

Even though the Bitflux Editor seems to have more functionality than  
Mozile I'd be very interested in working with Mozile because it seems  
simpler to get into. If it can get me as close to what I'm looking for  
as the Bitflux Editor, then why go for something which is an overkill?  
I also like the plug-in idea, it makes the browser a real content  
editor and not only a container for an editor. This kind of brings the  
interface closer to the user.

> 	If you want a WYSIWYG CMS system that separates form from  
> presentation, then Mozile can do a lot of the work. In my opinion, if
(Continue reading)

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