- From: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 16:11:06 -0500
- To: Jens Meiert <jens.meiert@erde3.com>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org, www-style@w3.org
On Jul 4, 2007, at 11:23 AM, Jens Meiert wrote: > > I'm sorry (only due the fact that I just love maintaining sites > that truly separate structure from presentation), but I judge the > @style discussion as becoming far from reality. > > So here's some "what happens if" concerning the "style" attribute. > > [...] > One thing to keep in mind is that anything dropped from HTML5 is still part of the UA conformance criteria. This means that @style will be there as a bridge. On the other hand, I think that dropping @style is just one step further than I would take the attempt to be pure. Drop <font> by all means. Don't even allow it for legacy content editors. Obviously <font> will still be there for those editors, but we shouldn't endorse it. However, I think @style is something that we should provide for certain left-over cases. When separating presentation from semantics is just more cumbersome than is necessary. Separating presentation and semantics is most desirable when styling semantic and reusable markup. When its clear that style will only apply to this particular element, just this one time, its just a concern for theoretical purity that want so require an author to add an @id and then add a corresponding selector to a separate stylesheet. On the other hand, keeping <font> around encourages authors to use an element that has no semantic effect and has a long practice of avoiding semantics. Often this is compared to <span>. and <div>, However, authors are already accustomed to adding semantic @class information to those elements. I think if we did one of these unscientific surveys we'd find many more <font> elements providing no semantic information than we found <div> and <span> elements without any semantic information (e.g., class="something-meaningful"). Again, these arguments are separate from what you're saying above. I think @style can be dropped from HTML5 and still serve as that bridge you spoke of as a part of the UA implementation conformance criteria. Dropping it merely says we think should not be considered a part of best practice authoring. Take care, Rob
Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2007 21:11:23 UTC