- From: Daniel Dardailler <danield@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:50:43 +0200
- To: w3c-wai-wg@w3.org
First, I copied the relevant section of the most recent Cougar spec and link it from http://www.w3.org/WAI/group/actions.html#ACSS Cougar (aka HTML 4.0) should be released to the public next Tuesday (July 1st). I'll try to have the Cougar authors incorporate some of the comments received on this list before Tuesday. > The document should at least allow for persistent styles to be > ignored whenever they are not specifically intended for the medium > in which the document will be formatted. The last version of Cougar spec says: "...A persistent style is one that is always applied (as long as it refers to the correct media type)..." So this is covered. > For maximum flexibility, it would be preferable that users be able > to deactivate persistent styles in all cases and substitute their > own preferences for those of the author. (I offer this as a > suggestion for further discussion). [also in reply to Al's section "Full user control over style"] This is (was) a political battle. The way it was explained to be a while ago was that HTML authors would not agree to using Style Sheet if they were not given a way to "hard-code" their visual presentation (which for them equals real content). It had to be in the spec. This is what persistent is all about. I'm not sure if the idea put forward in Als' section "Confirm overrides of essential styles" were studied. I'll ask Hakon. > Secondly, you could address the question of whether it is possible for > there to be a style sheet that can apply to all media. In the Cougar draft, > it is proposed that in the absence of an explicit "media" attribute, a > media type of "all" should be implied by default. This is still there and I agree with you it's problematic, as I think most people and authoring tool will omit the media type altogether. > Stated differently, the > style sheet is presumed to be relevant to all media types unless otherwise > specified. Consideration could be given to the question of whether this > arrangement is satisfactory, and if not, what alternative proposals might > be offered. I think the default should be 'screen'. I'm going to go down the hall today to talk with Hakon, Chris and Bert about this issue. > For example, should the specification of a media type be made > obligatory? No default allowed, that another possibility. > Presumably this would interfere with backward compatibility > and thus be unacceptable, but the general suggestion is that a range of > options be considered and discussed. BC is no so much an issue. The spec could say 'no default' and implementations can "grand-father" the 'screen' default. I think the "Rich media-profiling capability" section in Al's note is also at the core of this issue and I'd like to see if we cannot come up with a more concrete proposal enhancement for the upcoming Cougar spec (thing like adding 'media=tty' is good feedback, but I'm not sure people will have time to review WordPerfect features before next Tuesday...).
Received on Friday, 27 June 1997 05:50:47 UTC