Re: [Docutils-develop] Validating Docutils HTML output

[David G. <go...@us...>]

[David]
>> The docs look good.  Please note that if you regenerate the docs with
>> the latest Docutils (which I recommend you do, to take advantage of
>> the improvements to the HTML produced)

[Greg]
> OK, done.

The sources on the web site still say "Docutils 0.2.4".  The current
version is 0.2.7.  Not pushed out yet?

>> you should also replace the stylesheet. ... I recommend extracting
>> your modifications into a separate .css file and using the
>> "@import" statement to cascade the stylesheets.  See
>> http://docutils.sf.net/docs/tools.html#stylesheets for details.
> 
> OK, tried that.  Problem: the main modification I made was to
> completely *remove* your styles for the 'a' and 'tt' tags.  (I think
> link colouring should be up to the browser, and I don't like a
> background on inline literals.)
>
> So how do I override your stylesheet with removal information?

You can set the <tt> style back to its initial value::

    tt { background-color: transparent }

As for the <a> tags, these are the styles specified::

    a.target {
      color: blue }

    a.toc-backref {
      text-decoration: none ;
      color: black }

The first is easily undone::

    a.target {
      color: inherit }

In fact, I think I'll remove the "a.target" style from the project's
default.css.  It was useful for diagnostics, but implies meaning where
there really is none.  And it's distracting.  ... Gone now.

I don't know of any way to undo the second set of styles
("a.toc-backref").  But they're only applied to back-links from
section headers to a table of contents.  If you have no table of
contents, or specify "--no-toc-backlinks" (or "toc_backlinks: none" in
the config file), that style will have no effect.  These styles remove
the typical hyperlink formatting (color + underline), to make the
back-linked section headers look like regular section headers.  An
approximation to undoing the style would be::

    a.toc-backref {
      text-decoration: underline ;
      color: blue }

However, the browser itself or user settings may specify a different
initial color and/or decoration, and the color should change once the
hyperlink is visited.  These can also be specified (using the ":link"
and ":visited" pseudo-classes), but that just makes the whole thing
even more complicated.

Is there any way to *disable* styles that don't inherit?  Any way to
say "use or restore the *initial* value for this style, ignoring any
later explicit styles"?  I can't find any.

-- 
David Goodger  <go...@us...>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/