Re: block-based parsing?

On 9/13/05, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux <dom@w3.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I know there has been some recent discussions on how and why CSS should
> have a versioning system [1], and I also understand that the CSS Working
> Group isn't keen into using versioning.
> 
> While I mostly agree with the commenters about the usefulness of having
> versioning in the CSS style sheets, I'm wondering whether the group has
> considered an alternative solution (detailed below), which would not
> solve all the issues raised by the lack of versioning, but would at
> least help authors writing CSS across levels.
> 
> Most of CSS techniques today deal with how using the various bugs in CSS
> parsers to get such or such a rule applied. I was wondering whether the
> idea behind that could actually be incorporated into the spec with an
> at-rule parsing command, à la @mustUnderstand.
> 
> Namely, such a rule would require a parser to skip the entire block
> contained into the @mustUnderstand scope if there is at least one rule
> it can't parse or containing a property it doesn't know.
> 
> This would make it much easier to create style sheets that incorporate
> properties or syntax elements defined in later versions of CSS. It
> wouldn't solve all the problems, but would certainly help in many cases.
> 
> Comments?

It's been suggested many times; it's been rejected many times.

To sum up the reasoning:

Browsers can't be trusted to accurately say what features they do and
don't support. So they may say they support a feature and go ahead
with the properties in the block, but it won't in reality support it
and you'll end up with a mess.

That about cover it everybody?

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Tuesday, 13 September 2005 14:03:20 UTC