Add CSS to default HTML template

[mb21]

Two things that inspired this:

• questions like this one on StackOverflow
• I've recently updated and streamlined the CSS I use to generate simple HTML files (or publish to my blog), and was surprised how minimal it can be, while still looking pretty good (IMHO). The idea is to rely on browser defaults as much as possible (which are fairly consistent nowadays), so you don't have to override/normalize a lot.

Maybe this has been discussed before, but what about including something like this in the default HTML template?

I also quickly looked into moving this into the styles.html partial, but there we don't have access to all those variables I assume?

TODO:

• update the MANUAL, only new variable names are fontcolor, backgroundcolor (and style), although I suppose we could add a few more... considering how many we have for the LaTeX template... to allow even more customizations out of the box.
• add a variable to disable outputting that whole CSS block? Perhaps we could also set that variable automatically when --css was used? But I cannot imagine any scenario where you'd use --standalone, but wouldn't want any CSS whatsoever.

[jgm]

I'd have to think more about this, it's an interesting idea.

Note: the styles partial should have access to the same variables.

[jgm]

I have now tried this. The output is beautiful, and it adapts well to smaller screens.
I think a change like this should be discussed on pandoc-discuss. Do you want to start a topic there, so people can weigh in?

[mb21]

Thanks, will do!

[jgm]

I decided to merge this; comments were favorable. It was mentioned that this might give rise to endless requests for tweaks in the styling -- that is a danger, but we'll see!