Re: default.css

Just as a matter of interest, and only just of the subject, how come the
width property is recognized for DIV and not for P?

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Wilson <cwilso@MICROSOFT.com>
To: 'Stephanos Piperoglou' <sp249@cam.ac.uk>
Cc: www-style@w3.org <www-style@w3.org>
Date: Monday, May 18, 1998 12:01 PM
Subject: RE: default.css


>> Stephanos Piperoglou [SMTP:sp249@cam.ac.uk] wrote:
>>Both Netscape and MS need to rewrite their
>>browsers from scratch...
>>It is obvious that both browsers refuse to consider an HTML document as a
>>tree of elements, but instead consider it as a *series* of... things. No
>>wonder both object models are so inconsistent.
>
>Actually, Stephanos, you're wrong about Internet Explorer.  Its internal
>rendering model considers the document to be a tree of elements.  We have,
>in IE4 and beyond, an internal model that is based on the cascading and
>inheriting model of CSS, and in short, default HTML rendering is performed,
>in essence, by translation into the appropriate CSS properties.  (Actually,
>we never think of them in separate terms.)  We do not translate CSS into
>HTML or Javascript, we understand it natively.  We do not convert <OBJECT>
>into <EMBED> - they are separate classes that inherit some common behavior,
>but it is not a straight-forward translation.
>
>>And this is the reason why
>>correct rendering of paragraphs (possible the simplest and most basic
>>element since the birth of HTML!) is so messed up in both browsers: they
>>consider <P> to be a *paragraph break entity*, not a *paragraph element
>>start-tag*. Ommit the </P> and in most cases you get no space after the
>>paragraph.
>
>This is the crux of the issue.  We deem it to be a <bad idea> to break
>backwards compatibility.  Our customers tend to get irate when we tell them
>"we've got this great new system - now go rewrite all your content so you
>can use it."  (If you don't believe me, do a journal search on "Office 97
>incompatibilies".)
>
>That said, we do the best we can to keep the right model while not breaking
>backwards compat.  A <P> element is most certainly NOT an empty "paragraph
>break entity" to IE - but at the same time, we may not imply </P> tags
where
>the HTML 4.0 DTD says we should, because our rendering would differ,
>possibly critically to some customers, from those legacy systems that treat
><P> as an empty element and don't imply </P>s.  If this causes you grief,
>put the </P> tags in your documents, and you're golden (at least, as far as
>IE is concerned).
>
>-Chris Wilson
> Internet Explorer Team
> Microsoft
>
>

Received on Thursday, 21 May 1998 23:09:23 UTC