Re: Cougar DTD - I18N

In article <Pine.WNT.3.95.970504122941.-175567H-100000@hazel.w3.org>,
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 May 1997, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote:
> > Certainly. Then why are these attributes still present on elements
> > like H1-H6, P and DIV? Adding the %just attributes for all block-
> > level elements seems more consistent than adding them to just the
> > elements that happen to be supported in the Big 2.
> 
> The difference is that the align attribute is widely supported by
> deployed browsers. 

Why yes, but isn't "Cougar" supposed to be a draft with features
that the W3C encourages browser vendors to implement, rather than
a descriptive list of things that browsers support in May 1997?

> Adding this attribute to other elements requires
> us to make an effective business case to browser companies. This is
> hard now that style sheets already provide the rich control authors
> need, and are being extended to cover lists and numbering. 

This should be handled the same way as FONT and CENTER were handled
when the decision was made to keep them (non-deprecated) in "Cougar".
While it's understandable that they are in HTML 3.2, I see no
reason at all to put (for exapmle) the FACE attribute of FONT in 
"Cougar".

If stylesheets are indeed being pushed by the W3C as the next big
thing, then shouldn't these elements be marked deprecated to 
discourage their use?

An alternative approach would be the "shorthand" argument: just like
CENTER was added to HTML 3.2 as an abbreviation for <DIV ALIGN=CENTER>,
you could say that ALIGN=CENTER on other block elements is a
shorthand for CLASS=centered where "centered" is a class defined
somewhere that does the same thing.

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Received on Sunday, 4 May 1997 13:47:18 UTC