Re: [css3-ui] Problems with :read-only and :read-write

On 8/4/05, Laurens Holst <lholst@students.cs.uu.nl> wrote:
> 
> Adam Kuehn wrote:
> >> You can keep the expressiveness without allowing for the abuse.
> > Show me.
> Yes, show me, too.

If only I had the time. I've got diagrams and text written up on my
wall. I've been working on this for about a year now with the basis
for the happening long before that. Unfortunately this isn't what I do
professionally, but wait until the end of August when the rush is over
and I'll see what I can get you all. I do admit I haven't done the
best job of explaining myself, but the idea is very clear in my head
and the people I've shown it to seem excited by it and it's very clear
to them, but I just haven't had the time to do a proper write up. It's
a miracle if I get home before 10:00pm on a weekend.

> The only way that I can to achieve that see is to disable author-CSS,
> and make sure that website authors can only get their desired style by
> using the correct semantic markup.
> 
> But... we have that for many, many years. It is called HTML! In the
> beginning, there was no CSS. Did authors create good semantic sites? No,
> in the contrary, website authors took the control that they wanted and
> started to abuse tables, blockquotes, etcetera for things that they were
> not intended for. Nowadays we refer to that as 'table-based-layouts',
> and I am sure that we are all glad to be rid of it.
> 
> In other words, if you do not allow the website author to layout his web
> page, things will turn into a mess because they *will* take control
> anyway. And the tables and blockquotes example showed that even without
> CSS, perfect semantic elements can be abused for non-semantic purposes.
> Additionally, if you do allow author-CSS (even just a small subset),
> then a website author will always be able to abuse the system, e.g. by
> applying 'font-size: xx-large' to a <p> element instead of using a
> heading <h> element.

I grant the history, but not the conclusion. I've stated so before,
but it will be made clear if I could just get the time to describe the
system in ernest. It probably is too much for HTML and CSS and it
would be considered another set of languages all together, but I hoped
to work from here first. Clearly my strategy wasn't complete. I needed
to have it all written down first. I had hoped to have brain storming
sessions, but this doesn't seem to be the place for it.

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:22:19 UTC