Re: css layout should be symmetrical

On Sun, 07 Apr 2002 17:06:28 +0100, Ian Hickson wrote:
>History? Nobody is changing history.

The CSS 2 [and any other such] Recommendation is essentially a 
historical document, as evidenced by the separate errata and 
established procedures for revision.

>Nothing in CSS affects the semantics [1] of anything in any
>document. CSS is
>purely a formatting language.

I know what semantics means.  What I don't understand is why the Rec. 
says "The following 'display' values assign table semantics to an 
arbitrary element:" and you say that "Nothing in CSS affects the 
semantics of anything".  Those two statements are diametrically 
opposed.

For the record, the published CSS 2 Recommendation is the 
authoritative definition of this technology (to the extent that it is 
definitive; we are all only too aware of its many vagueries and 
shortcomings), not your opinion.

What you say contradicts the Recommendation.  So there are several 
possibilities:

1) The Rec. contains an error (says something that no one really 
meant).
-- If this is the case then the error must be corrected/documented 
and the actual situation clearly exposed.

2) The Rec. does not contain an error, but defines a behavior that is 
now considered undesirable or a mistake in judgement.
-- If this is the case it would seem to necessitate a revision or a 
new version of the Rec. to alter the undesirable behavior.

3) The Rec. contains neither an error nor a behavior which has 
subsequently been deemed undesirable.
-- If this is the case, then your statements are just wrong.

So what is the actual situation?


On Sun, 07 Apr 2002 18:52:50 +0200, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
>Stylesheets affects formatting and/or transformations of a marked up
>documents content only, they can _not_ add semantics to markup.

Unfortunately that is _not_ what the spec. _says_.

Received on Sunday, 7 April 2002 14:14:52 UTC