Re: XBL is (mostly) W3C redundant, and CSS is wrong W3C layer for semantic behavior *markup*

At 06:24 PM 1/2/2003 -0600, John Lewis wrote:
>
>>>> Shelby Moore wrote:
>>>> CSS selectors allows one to select elements of markup based on 
>>>> attributes which are not related to *semantics*.
>>>
>>> Ian Hickson responded:
>>> As an editor of the W3C Selectors Specification, I assure you,
>>> that is most definitely not the intention of CSS selectors. 
>
>> Ian's "assurance" was false.
>
>If you revised your original statement to "CSS selectors match
>elements without regard to the elements' semantics,"


That is equivalent to what I had written above.


> I think it makes
>perfect sense. CSS doesn't need to know the markup languages it's
>applied to, or any markup language at all; that's the beauty of it.
>Knowledge of the markup language's elements is contained in the CSS
>author, where it belongs.


Thank you!  Thus CSS is orthogonal to markup.  That is what I have been
saying all along, even though Ian Hickson disagreed with that as quoted above.

And XBL allows one to extend markup with new tags.  Yet XBL also combines
CSS and DOM dependencies in its syntax.  So I hope you understand that XBL
will make CSS and DOM dependent on markup.


>Of course, I could be horribly wrong. As always, I reserve the right
>to change my mind *and* pretend like I never held my former opinion at
>all.


Noted.  Nevertheless thanks for seeing part of my point regarding the
importance of separation (orthogonality) between CSS and markup, even if
you may or may not agree with my conclusion that XBL voilates this separation.

-Shelby Moore

Received on Friday, 3 January 2003 00:10:18 UTC