From: dbaron@ice4.fas.harvard.edu (David Baron) Subject: Re: New CSS3 module Date: 11 Aug 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: References: <37A87E00.FD285C9E@css.nu> <37AA89DA.1F97F064@der.edf.fr> <37ad1440 .671691491@enews.newsguy.com> <37B0ECC B.A0F2EDB1@der.edf.fr> <37c0caab.1111666962@enews.newsguy.com> Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Reply-To: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets In article <37c0caab.1111666962@enews.newsguy.com>, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote: > Irrelevant question. Either... > > 1) We have a specification that allows for it in a usable way, > i.e. it allows for a "working" situation where a cascade of > ua/user/author/user styles makes sense. > > 2) Admit that the current specs represents "broken by design" > and are beyond repair, then move on to disallow the cascade > all together. I think the cascading mechanism is absolutely necessary to allow CSS to be implemented sensibly. Without it, there would have to be two paths for rendering a document: 1) the document has no CSS, and is rendered in the traditional manner (with large headers, bold b element, etc.) 2) the documment uses CSS, and must thus describe in CSS the layout of every single HTML element it uses: margins for P elements, sizes for headers, font-weight for b and strong, colors for links etc., etc. This would be an unacceptable burden on page authors using CSS (especially considering that many of these things cannot be specified on the web due to the limitations of current browsers). It would also prevent the user from having input into anything, except perhaps font size (although CSS doesn't really say what em and % on the root element's font-size property mean). The cascading mechanism is how we combine the accepted formatting of certain elements and the user's preferences with the author's (possibly very limited) suggestions for a page. Without it, CSS would be useless. It must stay. I admit: it does have a few disadvantages. UA stylesheets should probably be better documented (although there are certainly many things browsers do that can definitely be classified as bugs because they can't be done using a (UA) stylesheet). The user is also somewhat restricted in his/her use of user stylesheets, mostly because of the current state of the pages "out there" on the web. But something is better than nothing (and the user would be able to do a good bit more if pages were designed better). I was writing something about that (user stylesheets and writing good CSS), wasn't I...? Maybe I'll finish it one of these years. David -- L. David Baron Rising Sophomore, Harvard dbaron@fas.harvard.edu Links, SatPix, CSS, etc. < http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/ > Summer Intern, Netscape - however, opinions are entirely my own, etc.