Re: CSS3: font-style

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Andrew n marshall wrote:
>> Why so you want to have a special case for 'italic' and 'normal'.
>> what about 'bold' and 'normal' ? Then you might wanna do that for
>> colors, as well??? Then why not have another that skips 1 on 3
>> levels???? Then ....

Well, font-style is a special case. With colour, you can set each
different element to a different colour and then if they are nested
then there is no problem.

But with font-style, there are only two (three, actually) possible
states: normal and italic (and oblique). So if you wish to use
font-style to highlight text, you must toggle it back.

As to the other properties, well, most _do_ have a relative partner:

   font-size      larger, smaller
   font-stretch   wider, narrower
   font-weight    bolder, lighter

Others, such as text-decoration, don't need them (text-decoration is
additive, so setting the underline to something whose parent is
underlined should just cause the inner element to get two sets of
underlining).


> Example Problem #1:
> 
> If an end-user sets their local stylesheet to:
>   blockquote { font-style: italic; }
> then the standard
>   em { font-style: italic; }
> fails to serve it purpose (to draw attention by being typed
> differently) in the following example:
>   <blockquote>This is an example of <em>emphasized</em> text.</blockquote>

Exactly. That is why this is a good feature. (Maybe what we need is
not so much "toggle" as "toggle-italic" and "toggle-oblique".)

-- 
Ian Hickson 
U+2642 U+2651
U+262E U+2603 U+263A