Styling HTML Files from Different Document Types
It is possible to style HTML or XHTML pages or files via a single set of CSS rules, even if the files were generated from XML using different document types. This enables you to provide a consistent look over a document set.
Elements in the HTML output refer to CSS rules. Those CSS rules will be based on the property sets referenced by the elements in the stylesheet. The basic process to support this requirement is as shown below. Specific use cases will be dealt with in more detail later.
1. A group of common property sets holds any HTML properties that are required. The property sets are made available for sharing across the stylesheets of all the documents to be consistently styled, for example by declaring them in a common stylesheet module.
2. Every element in each of the HTML files to be consistently styled references these property sets in their stylesheet for the required HTML output:
Explicit properties specified for an element will not be included.
3. CSS information generated from the stylesheets is based on the property sets so it is uniform across all document types whose elements reference those property sets. Use the Create CSS rules for option in the HTML tab of the Stylesheet Properties dialog box. Set its value to Property sets when publishing your HTML output or generating CSS information as a standalone file.
You may generate the CSS information from just one of the stylesheets and share it amongst all the documents. The stylesheet used to generate the CSS must include the information listed below:
• Definitions for every property set referenced by any of the stylesheets used in the document set.
• Definitions for every table of contents object referenced by any of the stylesheets used in the document set, if the TOCs are to appear in the body of the document and have indented levels.
If the definitions do not appear in the stylesheet used to generate the CSS information, the entries in the resulting body TOCs will all have the same indent.
• Definitions for every combined font referenced by any of the stylesheets used in the document set.