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

On Sun, 05 Jan 2003 12:14:34 -0600, Shelby Moore <shelby@coolpage.com> 
wrote:
> At 04:21 PM 1/5/2003 +0100, Chris Lilley wrote:

>>> This seems to be the crucial point.  Does XBL have any more impact on 
>>> semantics than CSS already does?

>> No, it doesn't.

> Wrong.  Because CSS states that its non-conforming portions are optional 
> for conforming UAs.  So a UA can be CSS conforming and HTML conforming:
>
> ======
> CSS can do non-conforming per an exact quote from CSS spec!!
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#display-prop
>
> "Conforming HTML user agents may ignore the 'display' property."
> =======
>
> Whereas, XBL is unable to isolate its portions which allow non- 
> conformance.  So there is no way to be both XBL and HTML conforming at 
> the same time.
>
> That is in a NUTSHELL, what my point has been all along.  Only now, have 
> I been able to state it so succinctly.

Forgive for mingling here, but I'd like to know what you (or others) think 
of, for example, this:

h1 {font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;}
i {font-style: normal;}

Doesn't this prove that the parts of CSS that are required for a conforming 
CSS UA can be used to create a non-conforming presentation of an HTML 
document? [1]

I haven't studied XBL at all, and I'm suspicious of efforts to mix behavior 
and content and presentation. But I'm even more suspicious of efforts that 
promote sending generic XML over the net for general purpose documents. If 
a document *needs* CSS and/or XBL and/or XSTL to be supported by the UA 
before it is usable in that UA in any way, than it has failed to be a good 
WWW document. If such documents become widespread, it would be less likely 
that a competetive market of user agents survives.

[1] Ian posed a related question already by the time I got around to 
sending this message, but what the heck, lets make this thread even longer.

-- 
Rijk van Geijtenbeek

Received on Sunday, 5 January 2003 17:45:16 UTC