RE: Issue 1: Font-weight and headings

Heh.  The "Microsoft plot" theory.  I love it.  :^)

Yes, our internal default stylesheet for various elements is hard-coded
into IE4 - for reasons of performance and user-proof rendering.  It is
fairly easy, however, for me to whip through the source and come up with
the default renderings, translated into CSS.  I would be personally very
supportive of coming up with the "UA default stylesheet" - however,
there are a couple of problems.  First of all, due to the
inheritance/cascading weirdness in IE3 and Navigator described in this
thread, it will be odd to describe their rendering in terms of a
stylesheet, since it won't cascade like a stylesheet.  Second,
font-sizes are a little strange to describe, since for us they scale
when you select a different font set.  This fits beautifully if you use
the named keywords ('large', 'small', etc.) for us - these behave just
like <FONT SIZE=> sizes in IE4 (and I think IE3 as well), which scale -
but Netscape followed the suggestion of the CSS spec to use a scaling
factor of 1.5 between adjacent sizes, which doesn't match.  Barring
that, you have to use point sizes - which are only true if the user has
the "medium" set selected.

	-Chris
Chris Wilson
cwilso@microsoft.com
***

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Todd Fahrner [SMTP:fahrner@pobox.com]
> Sent:	Sunday, July 27, 1997 5:26 PM
> To:	E. Stephen Mack; www-style@w3.org
> Subject:	Re: Issue 1: Font-weight and headings
> 
> At 4:01 PM -0700 7/27/97, E. Stephen Mack wrote:
> >Todd Fahrner <fahrner@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> [...] So what do y'all say we harness some of the smarts and
> >> energy here to produce an exhaustively-specified "default"
> >> stylesheet for all HTML 4 elements? [...]
> >
> >> If not us, who?
> >
> >Microsoft?
> 
> heh. If we do it, there's a chance that multiple vendors will latch on
> and
> incorporate it into documentation. If MS does it, it will be a plot.
> Some
> think CSS is a MS plot. That and XML. MS can have all the good ideas
> to
> itself, it seems, as most anything they do becomes a plot that others
> resist. <g>
> 
> >Seriously, IE 4.0 pp2 must have its default style sheet
> >embedded *somewhere* within it.  It's clear that IE's initial
> >values are outweighing inheritance, so these initial values
> >must be codified in an internal style sheet format somehow.
> >If this can be made available, then it will save us all the effort.
> 
> Key phrase: "codified in an internal style sheet format somehow". Not
> CSS.
> 
> >I agree with Todd that:
> >> Prudent CSS authors, hoping to avoid damaging interactions with
> user
> >> style sheets, can link to this sheet (@import) as a base. It will
> be
> >> easier and better to edit this sheet than to create new ones from
> >> scratch, complicating them incrementally as HTML content grows.
> >
> >There will be some speed and compatibility issues to consider,
> >and it will be difficult to create a default style sheet that
> >works for IE 3.x and 4.x and Navigator 4.x.  It's probably
> >worthwhile to ignore the various preview releases; it may
> >also be worth waiting until IE 4.0 is released.
> 
> Legacy stuff can be scripted out of the loop if necessary. NS4 doesn't
> do
> @import, so it takes care of itself. It shouldn't be pegged to IE4's
> release, as that might imply that it was custom-crafted for it. It
> shouldn't be.
> 
> >The first issue that will be problematic is specifying a default
> >font size -- what units?  What face?  Perhaps this is one area
> >where we shouldn't have our "default" stylesheet make a declaration.
> 
> 12-point Times is the default for <body>; 12-point Courier for <code>
> and
> like elements. This stylesheet would be designed to be overridden in
> the
> cascade (including user "appearance dialog" settings), so it doesn't
> really
> matter what the initial values are.
> 
> >If it's impossible to get one universal working style sheet,
> >then we'll have to resort to different versions and the use of
> >Todd's infamous script.
> 
> The one universal stylesheet, again, will be beholden to no real
> implementation, but to the spec and to the pretty consistent
> "consensus"
> rendering of plain HTML between NS and MS. If it breaks substandard
> browsers, then we'll know it's authentic. As for real world
> implementations
> - that's for real-world hacks like the script to deal with. It will
> still
> be useful to have an ideal base. I would think underdogs and newcomers
> to
> the browser wars would appreciate it.
> 
> >(Perhaps we can get the "default" style sheet to be stored at W3C
> >along with some other accepted "library" styles?)
> 
> Perhaps.
> 
> ________________________________________
> Todd Fahrner
> mailto:fahrner@pobox.com
> http://www.verso.com/
> 
> The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the
> infinitude of books, must be transcended. THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY.
> 
> --El Lissitzky, 1923
>

Received on Monday, 28 July 1997 11:35:06 UTC