Re: canvas <html> <body>

In message <3CD4EBA0.10227.17F81C4@localhost>, ewexler@stickdog.com
writes

>While I would not as a default display information in 'head'
>elements,

I think we agree :-) But the HTML should be accessible even if the CSS
isn't applied.  If an author styles something that would, in a default
presentation of the HTML, not even appear, then that page *relies* on
the CSS.  In a way as serious as the way in which an arbitrary XML
document relies on CSS (see below).

>that information can be helpful to a user and so I support its display
>at user option. For example, a browser operating without a title bar
>(as in kiosk/presentation mode) could display the 'title' element.

Well in that case we aren't talking about author CSS at all, we are
talking about the internal mechanisms of the kiosk program, or perhaps
 a specially-configured user style sheet.  I should have made it more
 clear I was only talking about author CSS - sorry.

To get back to root elements - CSS can't style something that by design
is not for presentation through a human interface.  I had always taken
it as read that, in order to accommodate a variety of different
 document types (like SVG), the root element eventually passed to a CSS
 renderer would in general differ from the document's XML root.  I
 hadn't realised that CSS 2 seems to rule itself out of general usage
 in this way.  But requiring an XSL transformation to arrive at a
 particular document root isn't necessary given that CSS isn't even
 restricted to XML...

"CSS can be used with *any* structured document format, for *example*
with applications of the eXtensible Markup Language [XML10]. In fact,
XML depends more on style sheets than HTML, since authors can make up
their own elements that user agents don't know how to display." [CSS 2
section 2.2]

(My emphasis.  Hmmm... there's the origin of the "let's all make up our
own elements" accessibility nightmare.  CSS 2 undid all of what the WAI
activity had done in one brief paragraph.  And CSS 2 isn't even
 supposed to be about document *content*!)

regards
--
George

Received on Monday, 6 May 2002 23:10:28 UTC