RE: Re: draft-ietf-html-style-00.txt & class as a general selector

Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C 
>Chris Wilson says:
>> I would say [...] _encapsulates_ an attribute 
>> specification.  The end of the attribute  value might otherwise need to 
be 
>> terminated by a ) or a , (context sensitivity or grouping, respectively).
>
>Context sensitivity _requires_ (using current syntax) ( and ) anyway.

I know that... I do read specs...

>So it is not a case of "might otherwise require". There is absolutely no 
>ambiguity and no need to terminate anything with a superfluous extra token.
>
>I suspect the only reason you think it is needed is the choice of [ as a
>token to announce that an attribute value is coming. We are used to seeing 
[ 
>matched up with ]

I did not say it was necessary.  Exactly, we are used to seeing [ matched up 
with ].  Mindset is, as I have said, a powerful thing.

>Tell me, if I have foo.bar, should that be followed by a trailing ] or not. 
Why?

Certainly not - it is not encapsulated.  There was no [ beginning the item, 
why should there be a ] to end it?  I don't want a syntax that has a single 
required token-delimiter, I just want some logical encapsulation.

My point was that if you throw out the closing ], any of the characters 
"),{" might end the selector, instead of only "]".

>> I'd still vote for it, the same way I wish <LI> were forced to be a 
>> container.
>
>LI *is a container. What is your point here?

*Forced* is the key word here.  Forced as in people actually use it as such, 
instead of doing

<UL>
<LI>foo
<LI>bar
</UL>

	-Chris