

Re: CSS 2.1 WD and non-CSS presentational hints

From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 23:11:09 +0200
Message-ID: <957426156.20020828231109@w3.org>
To: Stuart Ballard <sballard@netreach.com>
CC: www-style@w3.org, Lachlan Cannon <luminosity@members.evolt.org>

On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, 5:05:18 PM, Stuart wrote:

SB> How about this:

SB> "Any aspect of the markup which explicitly indicates a preferred 
SB> rendering, AND does not carry any other semantics".

Yes, that is a lot clearer.

SB> This would cover <center>, align="left", <br>, <pre>, <font>, etc. All 
SB> the usual suspects.

The trouble with those is that their rendering semantics are often not
clearly defined. So getting "the same rendering" is not always easy.
But yes, it would cover those,and it would cover for example stuff
produced by XSLT.

SB> <em> and <strong> indicate a preferred rendering, but they do so 
SB> *implicitly* due to historical use, rather than *explicitly* as required 
SB> by the proposed definition. Also, they carry additional semantics: emphasis.


SB> We might need an explicit exemption for the style= attribute, which 
SB> otherwise would qualify based on this definition,

good catch, all the more so since CSS 2.1 proposes to give it the
highest possible specificity thus disabling all possible restyling
further down the line.

SB> and that would be
SB> wrong. Perhaps "Document languages may provide mechanisms for explicitly 
SB> including CSS stylesheets within the document, such as HTML's "style=" 
SB> attribute. Such mechanisms are NOT considered 'non-CSS presentational 
SB> hints'."

Yes, that would be a useful clarification.

 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org
Received on Wednesday, 28 August 2002 17:11:18 GMT
