WD-CSS21-20020802 section 3, "Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations", substantive comments

Following are substantive comments on section 3, "Conformance: Requirements
and Recommendations"
(<http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-CSS21-20020802/conform.html>), of the
Cascading Style Sheets level 2.1 draft
(<http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-CSS21-20020802>).



3.1 Definitions


"All valid CSS1 style sheets are valid CSS 2.1 style sheets"

This is false.  Consider the selector "element-type.1-class", valid in CSS1
but not in CSS2.1.


"Source document
The document to which one or more style sheets refer."

Change "refer" to "apply".


"Replaced element
An element for which the CSS formatter knows only the intrinsic dimensions."

This definition is unsatisfactory.  First among its problems is that it
does not speak to the heart of the matter: the origin of the content.  Then
there is the fact that a CSS formatter would also know all media-applicable
properties for a given replaced element.  And besides, what happens if the
foreign content (say, a plain text document) has no intrinsic dimensions?

I am sorry to report that I cannot form a satisfactory definition.  The
best that I managed was the definition, "An element whose rendered content
does not originate from the source document and is not written literally in
a style sheet."  This definition designates as a replaced element an
element having "content: attr(title)".  While elements ignore the 'content'
property in CSS2.1, this problem shows my definition to be poor.


"Preceding element
An element A is called a preceding element of an element B, if and only if
(1) A is an ancestor of B or (2) A is a preceding sibling of B."

Consider the following XML document as a counterexample.

<doc>
<A>First</A>
<container>
<B>Second</B>
</container>
</doc>


3.2 Conformance


"UAs must allow users to specify a file that contains the user style sheet."

I would much prefer a more Web-savvy requirement, such as, "UAs must allow
users to specify a URI that identifies the user style sheet."



3.4 The text/css content type


"A message entity with a content type of "text/css" represents an
independent CSS document."

Change "CSS document" to "Cascading Style Sheet".

Received on Thursday, 14 November 2002 07:11:24 UTC