Re: Is there a way...

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:45:43 -0700, "Chris Wilson"
<cwilso@microsoft.com> wrote:

>Daniel Glazman had an excellent response to this thread, so I won't add
>much.

DG as a representative of W3 "had an excellent response" to this thread,
we are not discussing items related to "buddies" and "back pats" here.

>Jan Roland Eriksson [mailto:jrexon@newsguy.com] wrote:
>>Could you just not have displayed a bit of honesty and said?...
>>  "Hey guys, Chris asked us to change the spec since it would
>>   emerge to terrible problem for him to make IE6 fully CSS
>>   compatible if we did not."
>
>I presume you're speaking of me there...

That would be a very natural assumption since there is only one "Chris"
front figure for MSIE that this part of the world knows about.

>That would have had nothing to do with honesty, since I did no such
>thing.

That's good to hear. Sometimes it is required to "rattle the can of
worms" to get correct info out in the open.

>I was not really even aware of this issue until fairly recently;
>and though I think it is completely lame, and agree with the consensus
>that it is an errata that should be fixed...

There are two issues here; one is about something in "need of a fix",
and the other is on  _how_ to implement that "fix".

We just don't "find and fix errors" in a document that has been sitting
stable for three years, we create an updated version of it instead.

A proposed CSS2.01 would have been a perfect opportunity to clear the
errata document, adjust naming conventions, and go on to add clarifying
text about a lot of other issues that has caused "fire and brimstone"
over the years.

The CSS WG took a "sneaky" shortcut, and I for one, don't like it.

>...not allowing classes to start with digits (which is enforced
>under the DOCTYPE switch in IE6).

Since you are bringing up "the other PIA" in current browsers, let's get
technical, Ok?

What will the upcoming MSIE6 do with e.g. the following?

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "+//IDN htmlc.cx//DTD RcM1.0//EN" [
    <?ArcBase RcM>
    .
    ...lots of other architectural and notation stuff here...
    .
  >]
  <HTML>
     ...
  </HTML>

This is a basic skeleton of what is known in SGML as an "architecture
processing instruction". You can stay friendly by saying that MSIE6 will
assume "full CSS compliant rendering mode", if not? well DocZilla and
Opera are already usable to present documents with an "odd" prologue.

(and as Rijk once responded to me, when I asked Opera not to go into
<!DOCTYPE... switching. "We would have to invent and implement the bugs
to fall back to at first" Heartwarming response, no? :)

>>...And if you think that a simple underscore addition to CSS2 will
>>save the day, maybe you should spend some quality time on studies of
>>XML naming conventions :)

>Heh.  Hasn't hurt Microsoft a bit, since we incidentally allowed them.
>And since a lot of people use them in real-world pages...

Of course, and that's the basic reason for Q&A's like these that has
been pestering NG's for years...

  "Q: Hey, my page "works" in IE but not in any other browser"

  "A: IE is not spec compliant, lose the underscores in your
      class name values, and it will be Ok for the others too.

...from now on we need to change that "standard reply" too...

  "A: IE is spec compliant, but all the others are not, lose
      the underscores in your class names, and it will be Ok
      for the others too.

Is it not just wonderful, what can be achieved with a few new lines in
an "errata" document? And anyone can wonder why I think it "smells bad".

>I suspect the CSS Working Group (which I have not been personally a
>member of for over a year now) simply thought it would be a good idea
>to correct the spec.

They did not "correct it",
they "fucked up" and that's all there is to it.

-- 
Jan Roland Eriksson <rex@css.nu> - <http://css.nu/>
"It's a crying shame that CSS, designed to be so simple and
 approachable to non-programmers, has turned into such a
 cabalist's affair!" -- Todd Fahrner --

Received on Friday, 13 April 2001 10:20:49 UTC