- From: Adam Kuehn <akuehn@nc.rr.com>
- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:29:28 -0400
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: Tantek Çelik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>, David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>, www-style@w3.org
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. Yes, that could happen; but that's a mighty small use case to justify expanding the complexity of the language for the other 99.99% of the world. Maybe someday user style sheets will become a dominant, ubiquitous tool - but I have trouble envisioning a scenario within the next ten years wherein it would be common for a user to want to completely and arbitrarily rearrange a document. If the document was designed with decent care to begin with, a user shouldn't even need to make wholesale changes in the presentation order. As far as I can tell from what you've argued, we are talking about a relatively small change in a niche market. Does that really justify adding a significant level of complexity to a language aimed at non-programmer page authors? Particularly when that complexity comes at the cost of loosening restrictions on document structure, which in turn invites abuse? As Ernest Cline wrote, if it can be done without adding much complexity, then I'm not opposed. But as it stands now, I'm skeptical. -- -Adam Kuehn
Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 16:29:39 UTC