Re: draft-ietf-html-style-00.txt

   From: mjhanna@sandia.gov (Michael J Hannah)

|   I understand the motivation for this attribute, and would like
|   to propose a constructive alternative that I believe would provide
|   the functionality that the people who wish to include it have
|   expressed, and yet resolve the arguments that the people opposed
|   to it have also expressed.
---

Well, it doesn't address the issue I raised in earlier mailing-list
discussion.  When I really am doing styling of unique elements, where what
I am doing to each element is specific to that element and there is no
class of similarly-styled elements, I really want to be able to use
anonymous styles rather than having to create pseudo-names and indirect
through a stylesheet.  I don't want to lose that notational concision in
the interest of forcing other people to do the right thing.

My model for stylesheet adoption is that once stylesheet support is in
the major browsers, the net will rapidly evolve a relatively small
number of standard stylesheets (the browser vendors are the most likely
sources for those standards).  Once a few common stylesheets are
available, the examples people learn from, in books, net tutorials, and
common source code, will deomstrate the use of those standards and
*most* new authors will simply learn that as the way to write.  Ths will
be supported by organizational authors who are required by their
organizations to write to house styles.

I don't really think the STYLE attribute is going to be all that tempting
to the vast bulk of authors, once they have a few examples to look at of
putting all the document-wide styling information in one place.  Most
people don't want to type "<STYLE font=Palatino size=14pt>" on 83
headings if ther's a way to type it once and have it apply to all
headings.

The most important thing right now is getting to enough of a consensus
that some of the major browsers can implement something portable, so we
can start building that body of teachable experience.

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com

Received on Wednesday, 6 December 1995 10:00:42 UTC