Re: FAQ: CSS vs. markup for bidi support

Which spec are you quoting from here?

Steven

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:34:35 +0200, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:

> I see
>
> "When the user agent claims to support facilities defined within this
> specification or required by this specification through normative  
> reference,
> it must do so in ways consistent with the facilities' definition."
>
> Where
>
> "Facilities are elements, attributes, and the semantics associated with
> those elements and attributes."
>
> I'm assuming, however, that the facilities' definition is given by the  
> HTML
> 4.01 spec.  I'm struggling to find any normative text that says so.
>
>
>
> RI
>
>
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
> http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: www-international-request@w3.org
>> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida
>> Sent: 28 August 2007 18:14
>> To: 'Bert Bos'; 'WWW International'
>> Cc: 'fantasai'
>> Subject: RE: FAQ: CSS vs. markup for bidi support
>>
>>
>> > XHTML (application/xhtml+xml), however, *does* have meaning.
>> > The XHTML specification says pretty much that the meaning of the
>> > mark-up is the same as that of similar HTML mark-up.
>>
>> Bert, I looked for that in the XHTML 1.0 spec, and I just
>> double-checked, but couldn't find it.  Can you point to the
>> relevant wording?
>>
>> RI
>> ============
>> Richard Ishida
>> Internationalization Lead
>> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
>> http://www.w3.org/International/
>> http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
>>
>>
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Bert Bos [mailto:bert@w3.org]
>> > Sent: 28 August 2007 16:59
>> > To: 'WWW International'
>> > Cc: fantasai; 'Richard Ishida'
>> > Subject: Re: FAQ: CSS vs. markup for bidi support
>> >
>> > On Tuesday 28 August 2007 16:22, fantasai wrote:
>> > > I was looking at
>> > >    http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-css-markup
>> > > yesterday and noticed that there's still a major error in this
>> > > section:
>> > > http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-css-markup#xhtml
>> > >
>> > > Specifically, because namespacing allows XHTML to be
>> recognized as
>> > > XHTML even in compound documents, XHTML 'dir' attributes
>> > should work
>> > > in browsers even when the document is served as XML.
>> >
>> > That's not so clear. I think you should distinguish known document
>> > types from generic XML.
>> >
>> > The meaning of every bit of mark-up depends on the context
>> in which it
>> > is used, starting from the MIME type of the document as a
>> whole. E.g.,
>> > the fact that
>> >
>> >     <h:li>The second item.</h:li>
>> >
>> > is displayed as
>> >
>> >     2. The second item.
>> >
>> > is not because the meaning of h:li elements is to display "2.", but
>> > because it happens to be the second element in another element that
>> > happens to be a list in the context of this document.
>> >
>> > Namespaces are no different from attributes in that respect.
>> > They are more difficult to understand and handle because they are
>> > inherited and abbreviated, but otherwise they are just
>> mark-up, i.e.,
>> > syntax, without any inherent, context-independent meaning. E.g., a
>> > namespace in an XSLT document has a very different function
>> from one
>> > in an RDF document, which is again different from a WICD.
>> >
>> > It is, of course, bad practice to use namespaces in
>> unexpected ways in
>> > different documents, just as it is bad practice to use the "wrong"
>> > names for elements (you don't call a list item <red-cow>,
>> even though
>> > the computer doesn't care), but sometimes it's unavoidable.
>> >
>> > Which means, in brief, that seeing an h:dir attribute
>> outside of XHTML
>> > (where h is the namespace of XHTML, which I don't know by heart),
>> > *suggests* that the enclosing element is to be rendered
>> with a certain
>> > writing direction, but you can't be sure, unless you start with the
>> > MIME type and that MIME type's RFC and work your way through the
>> > document with the specification in hand.
>> >
>> > A text/xml or application/xml document has, by definition,
>> no meaning
>> > other than what the style sheet PI (if any) provides.
>> > XHTML (application/xhtml+xml), however, *does* have meaning.
>> > The XHTML specification says pretty much that the meaning of the
>> > mark-up is the same as that of similar HTML mark-up.
>> >
>> > So I agree that the quoted FAQ is incorrect for XHTML ("dir"
>> > works without any style rules), but I believe it is correct for
>> > generic XML ("dir" needs style rules to work).
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Bert
>> > --
>> >   Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C )
>> http://www.w3.org/
>> >   http://www.w3.org/people/bos
>>  W3C/ERCIM
>> >   bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des
>> Lucioles / BP 93
>> >   +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis
>> Cedex, France
>> >
>>
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 08:43:03 UTC