Re: Re: draft-ietf-html-style-00.txt & class as a general selector

Chris Wilson says:
 
> > Chris Lilley wrote:
> >So in this example, [ is exactly equivalent to my use of @. It means 
> >that an attribute value is coming.
> >...
> >The ] does not make it easier to parse. The end of the attribute 
> >value and the start of the declaration are clearly delimited by 
> >the {


> I would say [...] _encapsulates_ an attribute 
> specification.  The end of the attribute  value might otherwise need to be 
> terminated by a ) or a , (context sensitivity or grouping, respectively).

Context sensitivity _requires_ (using current syntax) ( and ) anyway.

(LI) (LI) ) { stuff}
(@snap=crackle) (foo.hello there) bar @id=three blind mice { stuff }

Grouping _requires_ ,

H1, H2 { stuff }
foo.hello there, bar @id=three blind mice { stuff }

So it is not a case of "might otherwise require". There is absolutely no 
ambiguity and no need to terminate anything with a superfluous extra token.

I suspect the only reason you think it is needed is the choice of [ as a
token to announce that an attribute value is coming. We are used to seeing [ 
matched up with ]


> >> Ah, but the class attribute specification is obviously not meant to 
> scale. 
> >
> >Why not?
> 
> I didn't mean it *shouldn't* be intended to scale, just that the 
> specification was obviously a one-shot deal, meant for specifying class and 
> nothing else.

Yes. A syntactic wrinkle. By examining the parsing requirements in terms 
of a sequence of tokens needed to avoid ambiguity and provide a well 
defined syntax, I was able to show exactly what tokens were replaced by 
the short form for class

Tell me, if I have foo.bar, should that be followed by a trailing ] or not. Why?

> >To make them more consistent? Fine. Although, as I say, the trailing 
> >square bracket is not doing anything.
> 
> I'd still vote for it, the same way I wish <LI> were forced to be a 
> container.

LI *is a container. What is your point here?


-- 
Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C 
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Received on Friday, 8 December 1995 07:57:00 UTC