Re: CSS aims

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:

> On 1/14/14, 11:29 AM, "Brian Kardell" <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I've been thinking a lot lately because of some related threads on other
> >lists:  Is it plausible to imagine a clean/reasonably complete decoupling
> >of presentation from structure without adding dubious amounts of
> >complexity?  I'm asking it here because i
> > think it plays in some ways to think about the direction of the platform
> >present and future to look at where to aim efforts at explanation and
> >extensibility.
> >I guess my question is:  intentionally pretty vague because I'm
> >interested in hearing where you all think various answers and pieces
> >being pondered fit together in this general aim.
>
> I have been thinking quite a lot on this topic. The way you’re posing the
> question, I think the answer is no. There is no reasonably complete way to
> decouple presentation from structure, because presentation often requires
> structure. Items are grouped or wrapped for purely presentational
> purposes. A layout has a structure that is separate from its content.
>
>
I know you have :)  I too think the answer is no, but I am **very** willing
to be shown the err of my ways.  I think instead there is probably a
"healthier mix" somewhere that probably does involve presentational markup,
but maybe can extract it separately for the most part without getting too
crazy.  I'm gonna leave it there in terms of my own thoughts though because
I'd really like to hear other, totally unbiased thoughts.  Imagining you
had every proposal on the table today at your disposal - what would you
actually use for this purpose, what would you probably not, and - is there
something fundamentally missing maybe.



> I think your question is different than, “Is there a way to encode all
> presentation in CSS?” I think that *might* be possible, but it would
> require adding structure to CSS. I’ve looked in to doing just that, and my
> opinion at the moment is that adding structure to CSS is (a) really
> difficult and (b) hard to justify when HTML is really good at structure.
>
> I think I am on almost the same page - I think I'd really like to see some
kind of good balance... I mean, maybe there are ideas - like maybe the
ability to import a collection of actual <template> fragments into CSS for
this purpose could simultaneously work and still be convenient.  I really
don't know.  I'm mostly curious for thoughts since I do feel like what we
have today is kind of a mess and - looking at things on the horizon - I'm
not entirely sure where it's going.


So I’m inclined towards approaches that find ways of decoupling the
> content structure from the presentational structure in HTML.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alan
>
>


-- 
Brian Kardell :: @briankardell :: hitchjs.com