Re: Backwards compatibility of new selectors (was: Color

Neil St.Laurent wrote:

<<Changing for the purpose of improvement and refinement is fine, as
you stated it is a draft.  However the will to rewrite/discard large
sections of the document due to major vendors not supporting it would
be a shame, and a loss.>>

Agreed, but is that what's happening? I thought all of the major vendors
were represented on the working group.

Some sections of the draft just don't fit, and seem to have been stuck in
for additional input. The section on tables, for example, is almost
completely outside the original rendering model, apparently requiring at
least two new display types. I don't believe this ad hoc approach to solving
a problem that was ignored in the CSS1 spec is necessary. IMO there are
existing mechanisms -- such as pseudo-thisesandthatses and absolute
positioning -- that could do the job, giving authors more control in the
process. Perhaps this would require some UA vendors to dump dedicated table
renderers -- a good thing for sure.

As with HTML, I'm sure parts of the CSS2 spec are compromised for the
convenience of the Big2 vendors. OK, but any additions that bastardize the
rendering model and/or require obscure and inconsistent declarations to
specify are a serious mistake, and in the long run would benefit no one.

David Perrell

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 1997 14:04:26 UTC