Open Issue #20 - Absolute Units In Style Sheet

Open issue #20:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/ert-open-issues.html#20

Is it OK to use a point size in a style sheet? Should we suggest that the
page author convert all font sizes to relative units (em, ex, larger,
smaller, or a percentage)?

This issue comes up because of WCAG 3.4 - "Use relative rather than absolute
units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values."

The guideline specifies that even style sheets use relative units, but it
seems to me that in style sheets it's OK to specify a specific point size
for fonts. The user can override the authors choice with their own
preference.

CSS defines only 7 categories of font sizes (xx-small, x-small, small,
medium, large, x-large, and xx-large) and most authors demand a higher
granularity than that.
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-CSS1-19990111#font-size

I see that CSS defines font size names (small, medium, large etc.) as
"absolute" when I would call them "relative".

Comments?

Chris

Received on Friday, 2 February 2001 09:48:55 UTC