RE: Some Views on CSS

I believe your message actually brings up two different problems.  The first
as you mentioned is the fact that CSS doesn't support a way to change all the
elements at once.  I actually believe that this is really a problem with HTML.
HTML doesn't define an inheritance hierarchy (or more appropriately, subtype
hierarchy) with it's elements.  If it did, then you could theoretically change
the appropriate base element.  While XML by itself doesn't describe anything
like that either, XML architecture do provide such a mechanism.

Perhaps it is worth while adding a note to the next CSS specification to
describe the application of a CSS on a XML architecture aware agents.
Specifically, elements that subtype elements from other architectures, inherit
the styles assigned to their supertypes.  You would need define how this
affects specificity the level, as well as there may be issues relating to
multiple supertypes.

The other problem I notice you brought up in your message was that CSS does
not provide any way to reference user defined colors.  For those of you who
are familiar with Java, this could be thought of as the java.awt.SystemColor
class.  It would be nice to define a set of color keywords for the next CSS
spec, such as user.background, user.text, user.link-background,
user.link-text, etc...  If the list was long comprehensive enough, perhaps
this would help Russell solve his problem and other like problems.


Andrew n marshall

Received on Friday, 10 April 1998 19:06:38 UTC