(unknown charset) Re: Official statement from Microsoft concerning CSS, XSL and US Patent No. 5,860,073

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, [iso-8859-1] Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

> Inanis Brooke wrote:
> 
>  > This information does not answer about CSS, however... For the record, who
>  > originally submitted CSS in 1994? Wasn't it Hakon Lie?
> 
> Yes, I first proposed and published CSS in October 1994 [1]. That
> proposal is referenced (along with several other descriptions of style
> sheets) in Microsoft's patent application which was filed in July 1995
> [2].
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/People/howcome/p/cascade.html
> [2] http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05860073__&language=en

See also:

http://www.w3.org/Style/History/www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1994q4/0536.html

Dated Tue, 1 Nov 94 14:33:43 GMT the message states:
-----
  In my view, style sheets should allow authors to specify how the
  document is formatted at a range of window sizes, taking into
  account user preferences and platform limitations. The basic
  mechanism is to define style info as production rules.

  The left hand side of the production operates on:

  a) attribute values and tag names

  b) the context in which some element appears

  c) other parameters such as the age of the
  document and the current window size

  d) available resources, e.g. font name/size.

  The right hand side of the production specifies:

  a) nodal properties such as font name/size for
  some element, plus color and margin indents

  b) spatial relationships like above, below,
  left-of, right-of

  The production is also associated with a weight following H&kon
  Lie's suggestion for cascading style sheets. I will be working
  with H&kon to refine this approach and implement it as part of the
  W3O testbed browser. We believe that it can be implemented
  efficiently and will lead to the ability to handle arbitrary SGML
  DTDs.
-----

So there is plenty of evidence for prior art pertaining to CSS
before the filing date of Microsoft's patent in July 1995.

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2984 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Friday, 12 March 1999 05:32:48 UTC