Re: XHTML

>From: Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>
>Date: Wed, Nov 24, 1999, 1:20 PM

<snip>

> you must
> admit that CSS was designed for use with HTML, given that there was
> no XML at the time.

I must take your comment to literally mean that you think CSS-*1* was
designed for use with HTML.  As Håkon has already pointed out, CSS-2 was
written with XML in mind, and many of the proposals and working drafts for
CSS-3 specifically take XML into consideration as a justification for the
abstraction of additional presentational "properties" away from HTML.

> Trying to stretch it into different shoes might
> be desired to keep it alive in XML but that doesn't mean that is an
> appropriate venture.

As far as what is appropriate - in letter at least, the charter of the
CSS&FP working group provides sufficiently inclusive scoping.

And in spirit - let the web market decide what's appropriate.  When it comes
down to it, the very authors and users for whom W3C's technologies are
supposed to be designed for will let us know what is good and what is not.

> As for my 'new-era'-speak, it happens to be the vision of the web
> shared by many of the XML community working within the W3C on the
> various XML activities, including the XML Core WG, XML Fragment WG,
> XML Information Set WG, XML Syntax WG, XML Query WG, XML Schema WG,
> XML Linking WG, and XSL WG. The impressive array of industry experts
> represented on these WGs are not putting in all this effort to
> improve HTML and CSS, they're working toward an interoperable web
> based upon a new foundation in XML. Like it or not.

"interoperable" and "based upon a new foundation" do not belong in the same
sentence.  It is easy to interoperate with the future - that doesn't mean
anything.  Interoperating with the present, the very productive present, is
true interoperability.

It is my hope that the various XML based technologies being worked on will
be designed, developed and deployed in such a way as to be maximally useful
with the present web, not just some future mythical emerald city web.

Tantek

Received on Wednesday, 24 November 1999 18:12:10 UTC