Declarative cascade reordering for styles

A computing device, having a memory to store a series of instructions to execute a document rendering application, the computing device configured to:

• process a style sheet describing rendering of a structured document, the style sheet having a cascade level based on a source of the style sheet indicating a sheet hierarchy for the style sheet to resolve conflicts with style properties in other style sheets;
• identify a style property in the style sheet;
• set a group cascade level for a property group describing a set of multiple style properties in the style sheet, the group cascade level being different than the cascade level of the style sheet and configured to resolve conflicts at the cascade level according to the group cascade level instead of the cascade level of the style sheet;
• identify in the style sheet a group rule defining the group cascade level for the property group and set the group cascade level in accordance with the group rule, wherein the group cascade level is lower than the cascade level for the style sheet and the group cascade level is between a normal user cascade level and a normal user agent cascade level;
• and
• render a document component of the structured document based on the style property at the property cascade level.

A machine-implemented method, comprising:

• processing a style sheet describing rendering of a structured document, the style sheet having a cascade level based on a source of the style sheet indicating a sheet hierarchy for the style sheet to resolve conflicts with style properties in other style sheets;
• identifying in the style sheet a property group describing a set of multiple style properties;
• setting a group cascade level for the property group describing the set of multiple style properties in the style sheet, the group cascade level being different than the cascade level of the style sheet and configured to resolve conflicts at the cascade level for the set of multiple style properties with conflicting style properties in the other style sheets according to the group cascade level instead of the cascade level of the style sheet;
• identifying in the style sheet a group rule defining the group cascade level for the property group and set the group cascade level in accordance with the group rule, wherein the group cascade level is lower than the cascade level for the style sheet and the group cascade level is between a normal user cascade level and a normal user agent cascade level;
• and
• rendering a document component of the structured document based on the property group at the group cascade level.