Re: Comment from CSS WG on HTML DOM draft

On Mon, 2002-01-14 at 15:19, Bert Bos wrote:
> This is the official comment from the CSS working group on the "DOM
> Level 2 HTML" working draft[1]. It is a week late, my excuses. It got
> lost. Hopefully it can still be taken into account.
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011210
> 

In November 2000, DOM Level 2 HTML was delayed for backward
compatibility reasons and our intent is to capture the current practice
in several implementation, which is not the case for indeterminate. Only
IE implementations are supporting this indeterminate feature for the
moment. The TriState implementation [1] does support indeterminate
property but it is not equivalent to the one in IEs. So, even if other
implementation are going to implement indeterminate in the future, we
prefer not to add this new feature for the moment. This certainly needs
to be on the list for an XForms API at some point.

Please, let us know if you are (or are not) satisfy with this decision,

Philippe,
for the DOM WG.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2002JanMar/0038.html


> 
> 
> ----------8<-----------
> As you may (or may not) know, checkboxes and radio buttons in user
> interfaces may not only be "on" or "off", they may also be an in
> "indeterminate" state which means that they are neither checked nor
> unchecked. Their state is - indeterminate, and becomes determinate
> when a user checks them. This is useful for example when you have an
> option for which there is no reasonable default (for a checkbox) or
> for a collection of radio buttons for which none should be initially
> selected.
> 
> The CSS working group has allowed the styling of the various states of
> checkboxes and radio buttons with two new pseudo-classes in the
> Selectors Candidate Recommendation:
> 
> :  :checked - selects elements which are considered toggled on in the
> :  user interface.
> :
> :  :indeterminate - selects elements which are considered neither
> :  checked nor unchecked in the user interface.
> 
>     -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-css3-selectors-20011113/#UIstates
> 
> 
> What we thought already existed were the respective properties in the
> DOM on the <input> interface.
> 
> There is a "checked" property:
> 
> :          attribute boolean          checked
> 
>     -- 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011025/html.html#ID-6043025
> 
> ...but there is no corresponding "indeterminate" property.
> 
> The official feedback on DOM Level 2 HTML is a request to add an
> "indeterminate" property to Interface HTMLInputElement.
> 
> :          attribute boolean          indeterminate
> 
> It can be defined as follows:
> 
> :  indeterminate of type boolean
> :
> :  When the type attribute of the element has the value "radio" or
> :  "checkbox", this represents whether the form control is in an
> :  indeterminate state (neither checked nor unchecked), in an
> :  interactive user agent. Changes to this attribute change the state
> :  of the form control, but do not change the value of the HTML value
> :  attribute of the element.
> 
> As far as implementation status, we will note that there are at least
> two different implementations. Both IE/Mac and IE/Windows (which have
> separate DOM implementations) implement input.indeterminate since
> version 4 (5-6 years ago).
> 
> Thus the addition of this property should pose no problem for DOM
> Level 2 HTML exiting CR since there are already two interoperable
> implementations that have been shipping for quite some time.
> 
> 
> Mozilla currently lacks this proposed property because when Mozilla's
> DOM was implemented, the property was not listed in the DOM
> specification. However, recent changes mean that the support for
> indeterminate check boxes will be available soon, at least internally
> (this support may not be exposed in the HTML DOM unless the
> "indeterminate" property is added to the DOM spec).
> 
> The DOM is also missing support for some other UI pseudo-classes, such
> as :hover and :active, and for pseudo-elements, such as
> ::indeterminate. However, we do not think it would be wise to force
> this issue at the moment. In our opinion, those issues are not yet
> mature. There is ongoing work in the CSS working group to find
> solutions to these problems.
> 
> Adding .indeterminate to the DOM2 HTML spec is, in our opinion, a
> reasonable thing to do for now, since there already exists several
> years' worth of implementation experience.
> 
> ----------8<-----------
> 
> 
> 
> Bert Bos, CSS WG chairman
> -- 
>   Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
>   http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/INRIA
>   bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
>   +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
-- 
Philippe Le Hegaret - http://www.w3.org/People/LeHegaret/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), DOM Activity Lead

Received on Monday, 11 February 2002 13:56:53 UTC