Parent/Ancestor Selectors

• From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@iinet.net.au>
• Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 10:29:04 +1100
• To: www-style@w3.org
• Message-ID: <3FDBA0C0.5080502@iinet.net.au>

Hi,
   Currently with CSS, there is no way to select elements which are
parents of other elements.  This has been discussed in the HTML list
with regard to combining elements such as <blockquote> and <quote> into
a single element.  Although it now seems that this distinction may 
remain because of the structural differences, I'm sure this may be usful 
for other places in XHTML and other XML documents too.

   If there was a selector available that allowed the selection of an
element if it were the parent or ancestor of some other element(s), this
would be very useful.  This would be similar to the :contains() pseudo 
class, however it would be applied based on the contained elements, 
rather than the text.

   What about a syntax like this?
E:parent-of(F) and
E:ancestor-of(F) or maybe
E:ancestor-of(F, an+b)

Where E and F are any selectors, but F *may* have the restriction of
only being a simple selector as is currently only allowed within :not().

What do you think?

CYA
...Lachy!

Received on Saturday, 13 December 2003 18:49:48 UTC