RE: [css-print] Selector section references lang attribute

Sorry, for the delay in replying, but I had a ice storm here and was
without power
for four days.


> [Original Message]
> From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
>
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Ernest Cline wrote:
> >
> > While xml:base is proposed for XHTML2, if that reaches CR before 2005
> > I'll be very surprised.
>
> I'm not 100% sure what you meant to say here, but in case what you said is
> what you meant:
>
>    xml:base
>    http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/
>
> And while I'm at it:
>
>    xml:lang
>    http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.html#sec-lang-tag
>
>    xml:space
>    http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.html#sec-white-space
>
> XHTML2 uses these, but does not define them.

XHTML Print does use xml:lang and xml:space,
without using xml:base which is as I pointed out, proposed for
inclusion with XHTML2.

The main purpose of CSS Print is  to provide a CSS profile
intended to work with XHTML Print with no XML not already
part of XHTMLPrint  being present.  In that context, the only
namespaced attributes CSS Print (as opposed to CSS
in general) could encounter are xml:space and xml:lang.

xml:space in XHTML exists only on certain elements, and on those
elements, it is always implied with only a single valid value.
As such, even if explicitly included, it provides no information.
Therefore, there is no need to support handling that attribute.

xml:lang on the other hand does provide information that is of
interest to CSS, and therefore it may be desirable to handle
the content.

The main point of my previous post was that given the note at the
bottom of the table in Section 3 of the CSS Print Profile, it would appear
that one reason for requiring support for the :lang() selector when the
user agent handles any sort of language dependent is to avoid
making support of the @namespace rule or of namespaced attributes
part of the CSS Print profile.

Taking a further look at this, I think I now understand the point JIm was
making in his original post.  However, given the level of required support
 for :lang() and the absence of the lang attribute from XHTML Print,
does CSS Print need to make the [foo|=bar] attribute selector part of
the profile?  There is nothing in CSS Selectors that says that in order
to support :lang() one must support [foo|=bar] 

I can see no reason that one would need [foo|=bar] in CSS Print to
support language dependent processing of XHTML Print.  If I am wrong,
and it is needed, then CSS Print should say something about
the required level of support for both namespaced attributes
and the @namespace rule, as without these, it cannot be properly
used with the xml:lang attribute.

Only if CSS Print is intended to be usable with either HTML or a poorly
written XHTML 1.0 document that uses lang but not xml:lang can I
perceive any need for [foo|=bar] to be part of the CSS Print profile.

Received on Friday, 30 January 2004 14:40:48 UTC