- From: Jeffrey Yasskin <jyasskin@appcomp.com>
- Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 17:00:09 -0600
- To: Tantek Celik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>, www-style@w3.org, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
The spec on initial and inherited values: > 6.1.1 Specified values (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/cascade.html#specified-value) > User agents must first assign a specified value to a property based on the following mechanisms (in order of precedence): > > If the cascade results in a value, use it. > Otherwise, if the property is inherited, use the value of the parent element, generally the computed >value. > Otherwise use the property's initial value. The initial value of each property is indicated in the property's definition. > Since it has no parent, the root of the document tree cannot use values from the parent element; in this case, the initial value is used if necessary. My interpretation: A property is always set. If not explicitly, then implicitly by the initial value. The reason: If the value has been changed earlier in the cascade, there MUST be a way to set it back. If the "unset" value gets special processing then an SINGLE setting can make it impossible to get the default behavior. In a thick cascade, this would cause major problems. On the image-in-a-table issue: Ian, what CSS code would produce an image that completely fills, and determines the size of, a table cell? That ought to be Possible, at least, even if it's not easy. Thanks, Jeffrey Yasskin
Received on Wednesday, 28 March 2001 18:04:27 UTC