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

On Fri, 8 Dec 1995, Hakon Lie wrote:

> lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk writes:
> 
>  > Could you elaborate exactly how that works? I don't see how the
>  > readers style sheet can influence the presentation of an un-named 
>  > ad-hoc peice of stylesheet on an individual element.
> 
> Incoming document:
> 
>   ..
>   <P STYLE="text-decoration: underline">underlined text</P>
>   ..
> 
> The UA would display the paragraph underlined until someting like this
> is found in the reader's personal style sheet:
> 
>   P { text-decoration: none !important }
> 
> To learn more about why and when rules override each other, see [1].
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-css1-951123.html#cascading
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -h&kon
> 
> Hakon W Lie, W3C/INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
> http://www.w3.org/People/howcome  howcome@w3.org

If an author uses unnamed styles in the body of their html, the difficult 
part is not overriding the author's style, but knowing what to use in 
place of it.  The reader's UA can only override it by replacing it with 
the default, so that the reader won't have any idea that the author 
wanted a special style for that piece of text.  If someone uses a style 
often, and a reader wants to change the way that it is presented to him 
without forcing it into the default presentation, he has no way to do 
so.  On the other hand, if the author names the style then the reader can 
add that stylename to his own stylesheet (with weight "important" so that 
it overrides the author's choice).

David

Work: seibert@hep.physics.mcgill.ca         Home: 6420 36th Ave.
Physics Department, McGill University       Montreal, PQ, H1T 2Z5 
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Received on Friday, 8 December 1995 11:25:40 UTC