Re: Controlling structure with CSS

> [Original Message]
> From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
>
>  Adam Kuehn wrote:
> > Ian Hickson wrote:
> >>>
> >>> So if an author wants functional flexibility, why not require the
> >>> author to explicitly rethink the structure so as to allow for it?
> >>
> >> Because the stylesheet author might not have any control over the
> >> markup.
> >
> > Then change my question to read "authors", plural.  If functional
> > flexibility is required, it needs to be designed in - by whomever is
> > doing the designing.
>
> The person wanting to do the presentation might not have any control over
> the author whatsoever. For example, a user writing a user stylesheet for a
> site that he wants to rearrange.

That's a mighty big might. A might that just doesn't have enough
oomph to merit adding features based on that alone.  That isn't
to say that there shouldn't be features for controlling the order
that elements appear in the flow.  For example, it would be nice
it there was CSS that would enable the same table to be displayed
in different ways with the rows or columns sorted according to the
contents of header cells.  This can be done now with scripting,
but since it is only presentational it would by nice if it could be
done with styling.  But that sort of functionality only requires
being able to rearrange the presentation order of children.
Any proposal that tries to do more than that does is not worth
adding complexity to CSS.  (If it can be done without adding
complexity, I wouldn't be opposed, but I am skeptical.

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 16:04:54 UTC