RE: Selector Readabiliitiy [WAS: Backwards compatibility of

I finally figured out what few things were really bothering me:
   1.) The use of the '/' in too many notations, especially as a bracketed 
notation.  This is also the source of my concern about whitespace, so if 
that problem is eliminated, then I could care less about whitespace in 
between operators and selectors.
   2.) The 'following sibling' relationship is a relationship between 
exactly two selectors.  Therefore any bracketed syntax '/.../' meaning 'an 
ordered grouping of siblings' can be represented by the transitive property 
of a binary operator. For example:
   / one two three /
might be equivalent to
   one | two | three
where '|' is the 'following sibling' operator.
   3.) I still strongly believe first-child and last-child should be 
pseudo-classes, solely for readability.
   4.) I'm disappointed in the lack of mapping between the characters used 
in the notation and their usage. But I'm not annoyed enough to do anything 
more than mention it here. (My preferences would be '~' for SIBLING 
relationships drawing on the use of tilde to denote similarity, where 
siblings have similar placement on a document tree; and '!' for immediate 
adjacency drawing on the use in English of stressing a statement, her we 
stress a relationship.)

So this changes my proposal only with respect to whitespace around the '~', 
which is now more relaxed (and equivalent to the current CSS-2 spec). And 
since I'm being asked to write out examples in a previous incomplete 
proposal, I will arbitrarily choose '|' to represent the 'following 
sibling' relation operator.  Since I have no particular reason for this, if 
anyone sees a problem, please let me know.

In addition, please throw out all my previous arguments on parsing.  It's 
obviously I am actually clueless to the process (and at this point that is 
fine by me; I do UIs and multimedia, not languages and grammars).

------------------------------------------------
Selector syntax proposal for sibling, child and first/last relationships
------------------------------------------------

To refer to an child (immediate descendant), place the '~' between the 
parent selector and the child selector. For example:
   DIV.sect ~ P {...}
would refer to any immediate P child of a DIV with class "sect". This 
should refer to the first, second, fifth, and sixth P, but not the third or 
forth P:
   <DIV class="sect">
      <H3>Section Title</H3>
      <P>first</P>
      <P>second</P>
      <OBJECT>
         <P>third</P>
         <P>forth</P>
      </OBJECT>
      <P>fifth</P>
      <P>sixth</P>
   </DIV>

To refer to any following sibling, place the '|' between the leading 
selector and the following sibling selector. For example:
   OBJECT | P {...}
would refer any sibling P after an OBJECT, which is both the fifth and 
sixth P's in the previous example HTML. I'm not going to say whether this 
is necessary, however I include because it keeps the mean of the operators 
consistent.

To refer and immediate sibling, place both the '|' and the '~' between the 
two selector in either order. For example:
   H3 ~| P {...}
or
   H3 |~ P {...}
both refer to the first sibling following a H3 only if it is a P element. 
The first P meets these requirements in the above HTML.

For both operators, whitespace on either side of the operator is optional. 
For example:
   H3~|P{...}
and
   H3 ~ | P { ... }
are both legal and equivalent.

Selection of the first and last children in a block is done by the 
pseudo-classes first-child and last-child. For example:
   OBJECT ~ :first-child {...}
refers to the first child of any object tag.  The tilde was used here to 
denote the descendant must be an immediate child on an object tag. The 
third P satisfies this in the above HTML.
   OBJECT ~ :last-child {...}
refers to the last child of any object tag.  The forth P satisfies this in 
the above HTML.

NOTE: As much as I can tell, both of the above are impossible in the 
existing CSS-2 spec! I have referred to the first element without any 
element type. The pseudo equivalent of the following:
   OBJECT // /
            ^generic element????

On Thursday, December 04, 1997 12:30 PM, Neil St.Laurent 
[SMTP:neil@bigpic.com] wrote:
> There is no problem with a parser extracting meaning from future/past
> context, it shouldn't be a problem on the parsing side.  I'm guessing
> that resolving in the parsing state is a lot quicker than trying to
> resolve the pseudo-classes at a later time.

On the account of readability, I don't care on this one.  I believe the 
time difference is likely to be nominal since the average case will include 
a limited number of pseudo-classes.  And this determination only occur once 
on the initial rendering of a page because it is dependant on the document 
tree, not rendering placement such as :first-line or first-letter.

> H1 ~P
>
> The operator appearst o work on P, rather than a relational
> operator.  Of course, this display would resolve my problem with
> determining which element the style applies to, it would more clearly
> be P than H1.

It is a binary operator denoting the relation between the two, just like in 
the current CSS-2 spec.

> / //H1/ ~ P / ~ EM //I/
>
> Clearly that isn't human readable, but simply refers to the first I
> inside an EM that is the direct descendant of a P which is directly
> following the first H1.
>
> Please, with your syntax show me how the above would be done (I'm not
> entirely clear on what you are proposing yet).

H1:first-child ~| P ~ EM I:first-child {...}

not perfectly readable, but I think it goes a long ways towards getting 
there.
>
> > > H1 ~(DIV P)
> > > /H1 ~ /DIV P//
> > > or whatever..
> > How is your expression any different than:
> > H1 ~DIV P /* P descendants of a DIV child of H1. Awkward, but
>
> It is different, because I admit that in my example I have no idea
> what element the style applies to, it could be the DIV or the P?
> In any case, my concern over what style the element applies to needs
> to be addressed.

I understand this to be always the last element referenced, so both would 
refer to the P element.


Andrew n marshall
  student - artist - programmer
    http://www.media-electronica.com/anm-bin/anm
      "Everyone a mentor,  Everyone a pupil"

Received on Friday, 5 December 1997 00:46:15 UTC