Re: A few anomalies in the draft...

Hakon Lie wrote:
> Chris Wilson writes:
>  > 5) It is stated that pseudo-classing a selector that already uses a class, 
>  > e.g.:
>  > H.foo:first-letter { vertical-align: top; font-size: 300%; float: left }
>  > is allowed, but the order of the class and pseudo-class is not.  Is any 
>  > order allowed, or only element.class:pseudoclass? This should be explicitly 
>  > stated.
> 
> It was in the formal grammar, but it will be better explained in the
> text version of the spec.
> 
>  > 6) An example of how to do a drop-cap might be nice.
> 

The draft seems to contradict itself on this.  It introduces
'pseudo-classes' as a means of avoiding the proliferation of 'alternate
properties'.  However, the section on text-effect states that the
'alternate properties' should be used to target a drop-cap, and even
contains a dead link (!) to the now defunct alternate-properties section. 

I personally don't feel that it makes sense to describe entities like
'first-line' and 'first-letter' as classes.  While it is perfectly
understandable that a 'visited anchor' would be considered to be a type of
anchor, I don't see how a paragraph's first line could *itself* be
considered a kind of paragraph.  Could a something like a 'pseudo-element'
be used instead?  Targeting would then look like: 

p $first-line { font-style: small-caps }

> The "economist" example isn't sufficient?

The problem with that example is that while the first letter is enlarged
and vertically lowered, there is nothing to indicate that succeeding text
should flow *around* the letter.  The conventional formatting in such a
situation would be: 
  ___
   | HE FIRST few words
   |
  of an article in the
  Economist..

rather than
  ___
   | HE FIRST few words
   | of an article in the
  Economist..

There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to indicate this difference-- 
perhaps {text-effect: float}?  Or {float: left}, as Chris suggested?

> Hakon W Lie, W3C/INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
> http://www.w3.org/People/howcome  howcome@w3.org

--
Michael Seaton(mseaton@inforamp.net)

Received on Tuesday, 6 February 1996 19:35:20 UTC