Feedback on 2 Microsoft submitted tests on outline

Hello,

There may be a problem with a few Microsoft submitted tests on outline.

Outline border is not necessarly *immediately* surrounding the border-box.
The spec unfortunately says

"
The outline may be drawn starting just outside the border edge.
"
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/ui.html#dynamic-outlines

while it used to say

"
The outline is drawn starting just outside the border edge.
"
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-CSS2-20080411/ui.html#dynamic-outlines

The difference means that an user agent may have a default, arbitrary
outline-offset of "n" pixels.

This makes some tests not entirely correct or not entirely reliable, like

http://test.csswg.org/source/contributors/microsoft/submitted/Chapter_18/outline-layout-001.xht
(the complete overlapping of border-bottom: 10px solid red; is not
assured, is not certain/guaranteed)

and

the assert
<meta name="assert" content="Outline is drawn directly outside of the
border." />
in this test
http://test.csswg.org/source/contributors/microsoft/submitted/Chapter_18/outline-layout-003.xht
may not be perfectly exact, not perfectly true. Right now, the word
"directly" is somewhat questionable here. Am I nitpicking too far here?

I wish the CSS 2.1 spec would intentionally and deliberately say
"
The outline is drawn starting just outside the border edge.
"
meaning/suggesting that outline-offset is assumed to be 0 by default.

regards, Gérard

Received on Thursday, 5 November 2009 15:35:33 UTC