Re: what is a non-presentational hint?

 | CSS2 defines special rules for the handling of "non-presentational
 | hints" in the cascade, in section 6.4.4. [1]  The corresponding
 | statement in section 3.2 of CSS1 referred to "stylistic HTML
 | attributes." [2]  Bug 45240 was recently filed against Mozilla claiming
 | that a user stylesheet should not be able to override the default
 | presentation of the B and I elements in a user stylesheet without
 | making the declaration !important, since those elements are
 | non-presentational hints.  By a strict interpretation of CSS2, this is
 | correct, but according to CSS1 it is clearly wrong.

As you emphasized, the CSS1 spec refers to "stylistic HTML attributes".
It makes *no mention* of stylistic HTML _elements_. As you so carefully
noted, stylistic HTML elements are not excluded from the CSS2 handling
of non-CSS presentational hints. CSS1 does not define this case; CSS2
implies the cascading order suggested in bug 45240. So, by a strict
interpretation of either or both specs, this bug report is clearly /not/
wrong.


~ Just for the record, most of the discussion is taking place in
  bug report 2942 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2942)
  since 45240 has been marked as its duplicate.

Received on Tuesday, 18 July 2000 23:18:19 UTC