Re: Precedence within a stylesheet

Andi Hindle wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I'm trying to figure out what takes precedence over what in a stylesheet.
> Thus, given:
> 
> body {
> 
>      color : #FFFFFF;
> }
> 
> h1 {
> 
>      color : #FF0000;
> }
> 
> will my <h1> turn out red or white?  Apologies for the basic question, but
> I can't find anything that tells me the answer and my browser experiments
> have been inconclusive -- I'd like to know what's _meant_ to happen, even
> if it doesn't actually happen yet in some implementations! ;-)

It should turn out red AFAIK.  As to why,  that's more difficult.
The body color is inherited by h1,  but is overridden by the 
specific rule for h1.

The reason it isn't clear is that the spec. doesn't ever seem to
make what is (to me) an obvious limitation on rule matching.  That
is that the leaf node specified in the selector (in this case just
the single element) must be a match for the element being looked
up.  All other desirable behaviors are defined by inheritence of
properties.  The limitation can only be inferred,  since I don't
believe it's stated (or wasn't,  but I'm sure some enterprising 
person will dig it up to contradict me.  I confess to having done
an imperfect job of reading the spec).

If that limitation isn't true,  then the inheritence model makes
no sense since H1 will have to be "white" and not "red" since it
matches at the same precedence and is earlier in the ordering (which
gives it greater force).  Similarly all such rules would match and
override child elements.  

Doug

-- 
Doug Rand				drand@sgi.com
Silicon Graphics/SSO			http://reality.sgi.com/drand
Disclaimer: These are my views,  SGI's views are in 3D

Received on Thursday, 18 September 1997 14:16:23 UTC