Re: 'role' should be property

Hi Maciej,

I wasn't actually proposing anything for HTML 5--I was merely talking
about desirable language design goals. I only mentioned these points
because Dimitri's initial idea was being criticised on a less than
solid foundation (which is par for the course on this list).


> CSS can't define document semantics, because it has to be possible to
> set a different stylesheet on the same document without affecting the
> semantics.

Semantics are often defined with 'rules', so applying a different set
of rules and ending up with different semantics is no big deal at all.
The mistake that is consistently made in these discussions is to
imagine that an HTML document is only one or two 'layers' deep, when
actually there can be a number of different levels of semantics.

Also, CSS is essentially two pieces; one is a mechanism that
dynamically sets values of properties based on rules, and the second
is a set of properties with specific meanings. The latter are
generally presentational at the moment, but there is no reason that
the first part--the property setting mechanism--couldn't be factored
out at some point in the future, to provide a generic way to set
properties. And there is also no reason that some non-presentational
properties couldn't be defined.


> Therefore a role CSS property would violate the
> architecture of CSS and the goal of separating semantics and
> presentation, even more so than presentational HTML elements.

You're really stretching things, here. :) I don't think you'll find
the 'CSS architecture' being 'violated', even if it were the case that
by some miracle the two aspects I mentioned above were factored.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@x-port.net | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Wednesday, 23 May 2007 00:47:16 UTC