One of the arguments against adding elements like SUP, INS, etc. to HTML has been that that kind of markup belongs in stylesheets. A number of people argued instead of, for instance, <INS>newly added text</INS> one would write <SPAN CLASS=ins>newly added text</SPAN>. As argued elsewhere, I think it makes more sense to use the STYLE attribute and reserve CLASS for data-type distinctions, but the argument seems otherwise sensible. If we want to encourage the use of stylesheets for this kind of markup, perhaps we should define CSS to have a collection of built-in styles for the most common markup - things like subscript, superscript, line-through, underlined, bigger, smaller, bold, italic, etc. - so that authors can use them without having to add definitions for them to their own STYLE element (or even to have a STYLE element if they don't otherwise need it). Any UA supporting CSS would be required to provide a default STYLE element containing a standard set of definitions; a document-provided STYLE element would cascade over the default, overriding definitions for the built-in styles, if desired. Coupled with this, I suggest that we modify the STYLE element syntax to allow using style names in right-hand sides, indicating that all the properties associated with that named style should be included. This would allow, for instance: [CLASS=doctitle] { underlined } [STYLE=C-keyword] { bold; font-family: helvetica ] This allows the actual properties associated with, for instance, all elements whose style includes underlining the text, to be hanged by changing the definition of the underlined STYLE. For instance, a stylesheet for a medium not supporting underlining could do something like [STYLE-underlined] { background-color: red } and affect every style rule using the style underlined, rather than individually overriding every such style rule, as would be required with thte mechanism in the current draft. scott -- scott preece motorola/mcg urbana design center 1101 e. university, urbana, il 61801 phone: 217-384-8589 fax: 217-384-8550 internet mail: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.comReceived on Wednesday, 13 December 1995 11:34:26 GMT
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