RE: New WD: CSS3 selectors

> A new working draft was just published:
>
>     CSS3 module: W3C selectors
>     http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-CSS3-selectors-19990803

It's good to see this.

Question: there's a caveat under the example "E.warning" that says "HTML only".
XML, unlike with IDs, has no "built-in" notation of *class*.  But is there any
real reason for CSS *excluding* recognition of class in XML, in other words --
providing automatic recognition of class (or CLASS) regardless of the semantics
of the markup language in question?

Reason: dot notation for class as used in HTML+CSS is so convenient, that I
imagine it will be highly requested by authors of XML-based documents and
implemented by the browser manufacturers, regardless of its official status:

	message.alert

		display: block;
		color: red;
		font-size: 4em;
		font-weight: bold;
		text-decoration: blink;
	}

	...

	<para>Bin Laden's message of the day:
	  <message class="alert">Vacate premises. Incoming US missiles!</message>
	<para>

Of course you can do the same with

	message[class="alert"]

or using other attributes. But would it do *harm* to have a CSS '.attval'
represent a shorthand of '[class="attval"]' -- even if it's not in HTML/XHTML,
where CLASS has a certain semantic?


/Jelks

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 1999 15:08:23 UTC