

Re: several messages

From: Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@expway.fr>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:16:25 +0200
Message-Id: <DAD3E6CE-C427-4C61-BCDB-7EEF1EC477EE@expway.fr>
Cc: www-style@w3.org
To: Laurens Holst <lholst@students.cs.uu.nl>

On Oct 18, 2005, at 19:59, Laurens Holst wrote:
> Robin Berjon schreef:
>> (which I believe is useful since CSS should be extensible, or at  
>> least that was my understanding)
> Why do you think that is the case?

Well, it was my understanding that CSS had been designed with in mind  
the notion that it would be usable in situations other than HTML and  
text-oriented XML documents, including notably mixed-namespace  
documents (e.g. XHTML+SVG for instance). I understand that radically  
different application derived from CSS (such as STTS for instance)  
should use a different media type, but in the XHTML+SVG case that  
would introduce a high cost (new media types aren't free) for little  
to no value. If I have to have two separate style sheets to style my  
XHTML+SVG document, it, well, sucks (sorry, but I can't find a more  
technical description at the end of a long day ;). This also means  
that CSS as applied to SVG has to be deprecated.

> CSS has no concept of namespaces like XML has, and thus extensions  
> can conflict with other extensions and future evolutions. As such,  
> I see no mechanism for extension, and as such it is technically not  
> possible in CSS.

Yes I know that. It's a really sad pity but also a lost cause so it  
wasn't the purpose of my post. The original comment as well as Ian's  
response were talking about properties defined within the W3C, i.e.  
not radically external to CSS but rather done in coordination with  
the CSS WG (which certainly was the case with the SVG properties). I  
thought that this was a reasonable assertion, and find it strange  
that it would be unilaterally revoked over five years after it was  
put into practice.

Robin Berjon
    Senior Research Scientist
    Expway, http://expway.com/
Received on Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:16:36 GMT
