Re: CSS Suggestion - based-on:

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 03:33:53PM -0000, Dave J Woolley wrote:
>  [Dave  J Woolley]  [ Off list - too many notices at end ]
>  This is basically the same as previous proposals that allow
>  references to other sets of rules and gets proposed about
>  every four months.

Well, I guess it's similar to that, apologies if there's repetition. I
 do however think it would be quite a powerful feature however.

I assume the feature you meantion continually gets rejected too? I'm
 sure there's a reason for it though. Is there an explanation somewhere
 in the archives. If there's a fundamental problem with that, that also
 exists with this suggestion, then there I'd like to find out, before I
 answer your queries in great detail.

>  The fundamental problem is that it plays havoc with the cascade;

How does it do that?

> you are not allowed to prevent the user from countermanding your
> styling.

I don't see how this in anyway would prevent the user from changing
 your style if they wished, since the user stylesheet would be applied
 last, and has the highest priority.

> The standard counter proposals are to use selectors properly:
> h1, h2, h3 { font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
>  color: red;
>  etc... 	 }
> h2 {  font-size: 1.4em  }
> h3 { 	font-size: 1.3em }

That's fine when it's a simple example there, but when you've got a
 large site with many different rules the CSS tends to get
 exceptionally messy. You end up with things like this, which are
 unavoidable.

#navigation #products.opened a:link, #navigation #products.opened
 a:hover (except with about 5 rules added on there)

It makes the CSS very unreadable and as a result hard to maintain. I
understand that this is a limitation, but surely there is some proposal
 that can solve that problem, if mine is unworkable for some reason.

> [And, if you find this not powerful enough, to use an authoring time
> pre-processor to generate the expanded CSS from your proprietary
> format.

That seems like a pretty flippant remark. I'm a little shocked by that.
 The W3C is all about maintaining standards. If there's a limitation to
 them, then surely something should figured out to resolve that, rather
 that telling someone to use a proprietary pre-processor. (does such a
 thing even exist?)

Regards,

- Kevin

Received on Friday, 10 December 2004 18:00:47 UTC