- From: David Seibert <dseibert@sqwest.bc.ca>
- Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 10:14:02 -0700 (PDT)
- To: www-style@w3.org
- Cc: howcome@w3.org, bert@w3.org, dsr@w3.org
I am currently working on translating CSS1 to DSSSL-o, and have run into a problem that could be very easily fixed by a small change in the CSS1 specification. Translating the values for the attribute 'font-style' is difficult to do cleanly because 'small-caps' involves a transformation of the characters of the text, while the other values ('none', 'italic', and 'oblique') can be translated as a style description. My problem would be remedied if the value 'small-caps' were instead given to the attribute 'text-transform'. This move makes sense in the context of CSS, as 'small-caps' is orthogonal to any of the other possible values of 'font-style' (i.e., it can be specified independently of those values), but not to the values of 'text-transform' ('none', 'lowercase', 'uppercase', and 'capitalize'). This quickly becomes apparent if you try to imagine producing 'small-caps uppercase' text. The move also makes sense for the DSSSL-o translation of 'text-transform', as all of these values (except 'none', of course) obviously involves transformations of the text as well, making the grouping more natural. I realize that CSS has officially become stable, but I doubt that this small change would represent a problem to anyone trying to implement it at present. It should at most involve moving a small amount of code between subroutines, as there will be no change in the behavior required to implement the value. As it would be advantageous for DSSSL and DSSSL-o translation, and would help keep users from specifying style prescriptions that are impossible to render, I suggest that this change be made as soon as possible. Thanks, David
Received on Friday, 31 May 1996 13:14:23 UTC