Re: The CSS1 and 2 diffs

On Nov 4,  4:12pm, Space Cowboy wrote:
> Subject: The CSS1 and 2 diffs
>
> When is the specification going to be finished?

How long is a piece of string? ;-) Well, hopefully it will become a
Proposed Recommendation before new Year. The spec has been in production,
initially in isolated pieces, since December 95. Parts of it have been
published before (Web Fonts, CSS Positioning, CSS Printing, ACSS, NOTE
on potential enhancements) and are already implemented.

The spec released today, which started to form as an all-in-one spec around
three months ago, brings all these pieces together, adds CSS1 and CSS1
eratta, so that the interactions between the pieces can be specified.

So consider the CSS2 WD to be a mature document (it isn't something that
was just put together in a short time, large parts of it are already
implemented, there is support in the authoring tools).

> I know that it's not
> reliable until it's a recommendation, but I need to know when I can
> expect the document to be finished,

Right, but there are degrees of reliability. While things are sure to
change, the  freedom to change decreases as implementations appear and
content is generated that useds the features. There  can be changes
between Proposed Rec and Recommendation, too. As specifications mature,
these changes tend to be more of the "how can we reword this sentence to
remove a potential ambiguity" and less of a "how about doing this a
whole new different way".

> especially the "What's New In CSS2" appendix.

We were putting our effort into writing the stuff rather than
documenting changes. You can expect this section to fill out shortly.
But the short answer - whats new includes CSS-Positioning, Web Fonts,
CSS Printing, Aural CSS, support for tables, richer selectors, better
explanation, clearing up ambiguities, hopefully it is easier to understand
and thus to implement.

> It looks like really great work otherwise.

Thanks. Detailed comments, criticisms, change requests, etc are welcome,
in this mailing list. Tell us about what parts you like, too.


-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 4 November 1997 17:07:39 UTC