Re: Possible CSS2/CSS2.1/CSS3 spec error in @media

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Jens Meiert wrote:

> "A CSS user agent that encounters an unrecognized at-rule must ignore the
> whole of the at-rule and continue parsing after it." [1]

The formulation is vague - not exactly the kind of language we should
expect from _specifications_. I'm referring to the word "unrecognized".

Does it mean an at-rule that a user agent's CSS parser does not actually
recognize? In that case, is it acceptable that the parser recognizes
constructs that do not conform to the CSS specification? That's what
happens these days anyway. A browser might even _recognize_ a construct
e.g. as an extension supported by other browsers and issue an error
message or something, or support the extension on Sundays or according to
user-settable settings. So "unrecognized" would not be the same as
"supported".

If, on the other hand, "unrecognized" is meant to refer to an at-rule
that does not conform to the specification, the wording should be changed
to say so. This means some verbal work, since "at-rule" is a concept
in the specification and hence there is, strictly speaking, no at-rule
that does not conform to the specification.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Friday, 8 October 2004 07:16:55 UTC