Re: CSS 4?

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Dylan Schiemann wrote:
> 
>As I've mentioned previously, behaviors used in this way bother me
>>because it uses the css mechanism to add much more than style.
> 
> 
> BECSS bindings and similar technologies are designed to add stylistic
> (albeit quite involved) look and feel to documents.
> 
> They are not designed to add semantics to the document.

Yes, but the flexibility of XBL seems to encourage it (the script 
element for example).  The stylesheet element feels "dirty", though if 
you're allowing anonymous content to be added, then you have to have a 
way to style it I suppose.

> For example, BECSS-like technologies could be used to bind the logic to
> XForms controls. No new semantics -- the XForms controls already have the
> XForms semantcs -- but a look and feel (and in this case logic) that
> implements those semantics.

Sure, but why do this through css, and not through the dom using 
addBinding() (besides the obvious fact that it is often easier to 
describe a set of elements through css selectors than through DOM, 
though maybe DOM XPath resolves this?  maybe DOM Style/CSS needs to be 
fixed to be able to select the same things as css selectors? 
getElementsByCSSSelector ?)

> It is, of course, possible to abuse this. But it is possible to abuse CSS
> already, for example by writing a document using only <div> elements, or
> writing stylesheets that insert data like this:
> 
>    body:after { content: "Written by A. N. Other."; }
> 
> Yes, this adds more than style to the document, and is wrong, but it
> doesn't mean the concept is wrong, because you can use the exact same
> selector and property with a slightly different value and have a purely
> stylistic case:
> 
>    body:after { content: "\263A"; }

Seems that using uri for content is comparable depending on what is 
allowed in uri (which isn't clear in css2.1 in my opinion).  For 
example, could the uri be a document fragment?  If so, could it contain 
a stylesheet to define style rules for the inserted content?

By the way, http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/generate.html#propdef-content 
does not list <uri> in the condensed Value list (not sure if this was 
noted previously on the list).

>>I have argued in the past that at a minimum, bindings should have their
>>own "binding sheet" and perhaps their own type, for example text/becss.
>>However, this does make it difficult when a binding describes style and
>>logic, as style rules included through a binding lose their place in the
>>cascade if completely separated from css.
> 
> 
> One use of XBL (which I hope BECSS will support) is scoping of style
> rules. That is purely stylistic, and, as Hyatt pointed out, well-defined.

I agree that it is nice to have this.  What happens when bindings are 
added using the addBinding method?  Is this the equivalent of adding a 
statement at the end of the stylesheet?  Can a binding be added/removed 
using the DOM 2 CSS StyleSheet interface's insertRule/deleteRule instead 
of DocumentXBL's addBinding?  I guess my real question here is how do 
DocumentXBL and StyleSheet interact?

Say for the sake of argument that I were to define an xml syntax lxbl 
(lesser xbl) whose sole purpose was to list pairs of event type and 
event handlers (in other words a small subset of xbl).  Would it make 
sense to use css to bind these defintions to selectors?  I would say no, 
that it should be done through the DocumentLXBL interface, or through 
some other css-like document that supports selectors, but that isn't 
css.  At least that would feel "cleaner" to me.  Whatever, though, I 
think I'm in the minority on this.

-Dylan

--
Dylan Schiemann
http://www.dylanschiemann.com/
http://www.sitepen.com/

Received on Sunday, 26 October 2003 04:45:55 UTC