Re: Ambiguities in using 'inherit' in 'font' shorthand

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, L. David Baron wrote:
> >
> > It should be disallowed in such cases.  'inherit' should be allowed only
> > as the complete value in a declaration, never as part of a shorthand.
>
> That's already the case. See CSS2.1 section 1.4.2, subsection Value, list
> item 3, sentence 3.

OK, thanks, I _did_ miss something. But if you look at how the 'font'
shorthand is defined, at
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#propdef-font
then you see the "Value:" part, where several valus are links, and if you
follow e.g. the 'font-style' link, you find yourself looking

'font-style'
Value:   normal | italic | oblique | inherit

(and 'inherit' is a link there, but the text pointed to does not say
anything about the prohibition mentioned).

So I am pretty sure that many other people will miss it too, unless the
situation is clarified.

I wonder whether it would be a good idea to remove 'inherit' from all the
descriptions of allowed values and describe it completely separately.
In practical terms, if a value is always permitted, for any property, does
it make sense to list it everywhere - especially when it is not, in fact,
permitted quite always, and the way you list it everywhere gives the wrong
idea about this?

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:38:05 UTC