Re: the STYLE attribute

[ Sorry for the continued cross-posting, but this seems relevant 
  to both mailing lists... ]

Hakon Lie <howcome@w3.org> wrote:

> Glenn Adams writes:
>  > (2) it should be possible to include multiple STYLE elements, each using
>  > different notations (in order to support the specification of appearance
>  > not only with different style languages but also with different versions
>  > of a style language).
>  > 
>  > (3) it would therefore be impossible to determine what notation a STYLE
>  > attribute is using without introducing either (a) a convention which used
>  > a prior STYLE element in HEAD to specify a notation which not only applied
>  > to that element but which persists to subsequent elements which employed
>  > a STYLE attribute (clearly this is a hack); or (b) an application
>  > convention that a STYLE attribute always followed a particular notation;
>  > (c) an additional attribute STYLE-NOTATION that would be concurrently
>  > required with a STYLE attribute (a constraint that an SGML parser could
>  > not validate).
> 
> (a) could work just fine, but there is a fourth alternative: an
> attribute to the BODY tag. I believe someone suggested (Bill Perry?)
> this during the workshop.

None of these solutions allow multiple notations to be used
with a single document, though.  (``Click _here_ for HTML
with Netscape-format style attributes, click _here_ for 
HTML with Arena-format style attributes, click _here_ for PDF.'')

A STYLE attribute is not _necessarily_ a horrible idea, but 
it's vital that a single style notation be standardized before
adding it to HTML.



--Joe English

  joe@trystero.art.com

Received on Friday, 10 November 1995 13:43:00 UTC