Re: Support Existing Content (was: Proposed Design Principles review)

On Apr 30, 2007, at 5:06 PM, Tina Holmboe wrote:

>   No-one implemented it, and so the W3C dropped it from CSS 2.1. Am  
> I to
>   assume all the browser vendors thought the CSS 2.1 method was as
>   horrible as the CSS 3 one is?
>

One of the problems is that the spec is really overengineered.  It  
goes way beyond what IE or NS implemented (both of which were  
relatively simple).  Even ignoring the spec, we could have just  
copied IE, but the problem is that IE has made the creation of these  
embedded OpenType fonts really hard.  You can't just download a .ttf  
file for example... you have to make these .eot files.  We couldn't  
really implement that, since we can't render .eot.


>   May I also, then, assume, that browser vendors /won't/ implement it
>   this time either, because it is "horrible", but will rather  
> implement
>   the method you have agreed on?
>

Actually so far nobody has implemented anything, because we've been  
trying to work within the W3C to get the specification simplified.   
Right now what's specified in CSS3 (and what was in CSS2.0) is so  
complex that it would take a huge amount of work to implement (and  
most of the extra work involved is for features of marginal  
benefit).  Anyway, you're welcome to take this up in www-style, which  
would be a better place to talk about this particular area I think.

>   Will the browser vendors implement a specification that
>   the WG agree on, or will they not? If they don't, what will they
>   implement?

In the case of CSS3, these specs are broken up into modules, so a  
browser vendor can pick and choose which modules to conform to.  It's  
a little different from HTML at the moment, which is shaping up to be  
a monolithic single spec.  In general, because of the modular  
breakup, I do think a browser vendor is free to pick and choose the  
CSS3 modules to implement.


>   Or - since we are discussing HTML 5 - this mean that the WHATWG
>   members will implement WA1, regardless, non-WHATWG vendors will
>   implement something else, and all of them will - again - ignore the
>   standard ... because the standard doesn't meet with their wishes?
>

As Ian has said, we will try to ensure that the WHATWG document  
remains a superset of the HTML spec in the W3C.

dave

Received on Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:31:36 UTC