[wp-hackers] How about requiring themes define helper variables/funcs for major CSS attributes?

[David Chait]

A long time ago, I created my 'sideblock' functions to help abstract out the 
wrappering-style of items in a sidebar/menu.  Basically, the functions 
inserted the proper start and end tags, whether they were divs, ul/li, li/h2 
(Kubrick), etc.

Now, that's fine and dandy when I control the theme... ;)  But with the 
variety of themes out there, and plugin developers (like myself) trying to 
'attune' output to match themes properly, it would seem to be necessary for 
the themes to define either variables, functions, or both, that plugins can 
call to appropriately style certain types of elements.

At the start, even just styling of sidebar elements would be helpful.  In 
the long run, other main-content elements should be done as well.  It'd also 
be good if there was some consistency in 'main' blocks like 'content' and 
'post' and such things, and that any special class attribution (like 
Kubrick's "narrowcolumn", etc.) were also somehow declared in a 
variable/function.

Thoughts, comments, further brainstorming?  Kubrick isn't the only one that 
causes me difficulty, it just does the most total 'different' approaches 
that it makes sample code difficult. ;)  The worst of which is the use of 
the 'before:' CSS2 tag on the sidebar li's -- which I'm still trying to find 
the proper way to 'turn off' on li's I don't want prefixed... :)

-d