Re: Direct formatting STYLE attribute

Paul Prescod says:

> When you are trying to move people to a new paradigm, you must make it
> difficult to slip back into the old one.  I would guess that that is why
> SmallTalk and Java don't have functions, and why ANSI C has strong type
> checking.

Nice argument, I like it. I am thus somewhat baffled that Paul concludes:

> The proposed STYLE attribute allows you to do your "red", "green", "blue"
> thing and still serves this educational purpose.  It seems like a good
> compromise to me.

Are you talking about the style attribute proposal where the value is
a style name, or the one where it is allowed to contain arbitrary 
stylesheet declarations?

Because the latter sounds very much like what you warn against:

a) the old one:

  <h2 font+=2 face="garamond"> 
  
b) what lets you slip back:

  <h2 style="{font-size: 3; font-family: garamond}">

c) what makes it "difficult to slip back" or rather, what points the way forward:

  <h2 style="section-head">  or 
  <h2 class="chapter title"> or whatever we end up calling this 
                                hook into stylesheets.

I presume therefore that you are referring to the other proposal, where 
the style attribute takes a name only.
   
-- 
Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C 
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