Re: [CSS21] Unclear applicability to XML

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
>> Our CR exit criteria requires significantly better implementations than 
>> were available for @font-face as far as we could tell.
> 
> For the whole thing, or for the subset that is useful and implemented?

We were unable to find a reliably implemented useful subset.


>> In addition, we have neither a decent test suite for @font-face nor any 
>> volunteers to write one, which would be another problem with moving 
>> @font-face through to REC in CSS2.1.
> 
> The same applied to most of CSS 2.1, which until recently had only a 
> copy of the CSS1 tests and no CSS2 tests at all.

That is clearly not true; multiple volunteers existed for the parts of 
CSS2.1 that remain (and they have by now started submitting tests).


>> The @font-face feature in CSS2 is still in CSS2, and is also covered by 
>> a CSS3 spec for which, if I am not mistaken, you are the editor. 
>> Therefore we do not see any difficulty in the removal of this feature.
> 
> There is a certain 'difficulty' in having RECs that used to point to 
> RECs now point to unstable working drafts.

I encourage you to finish the CSS3 module, then.


>> CSS2.1 is intended for applications that style structured documents, be 
>> they based on SGML or XML or another tree-based format. However, our 
>> primary concern is with full implementations of CSS,
> 
> Please define that term.

Implementations that are intended to support all the features in 2.1.


>> not implementations of subparts of CSS required by other 
>> specifications,
> 
> Such as CSS Print or CSS Mobile profile?

Exactly. Those specifications are not being considered when it comes to 
CSS2.1 exiting CR.


>> as it is the complete implementations that will help us exit CR. (It 
>> doesn't really matter if we have interoperability on one half of the 
>> spec in one set of UAs and another half of the spec in another set of 
>> UAs -- that would be pretty worthless for Web authors!)
> 
> Certainly. Although, if the two sets of UAs were disjoint then having 
> two specifications, each of which defined the half that a set of UAs 
> used, would be of value.

Indeed. I encourage you to finish the second specification in question.


> The specific request is to
> 
> a) clarify whether CSS2.1 is aimed at:
>  1) HTML 4.x user agents only
>  2) HTML 4.x and XHTML user agents (collectively, (X)HTML only)
>  3) A variety of user agents, including (X)HTML, SVG,
>  4) A wide variety of XML and (X)HTML user agents including MathML, DocBook,
>  CML etc etc

None of the above. It's aimed at any markup language that can benefit from 
CSS as a whole; HTML, XHTML, DocBook, and a large number of proprietary 
languages such as XUL and private document languages. In short, CSS 2.1 is 
a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style 
(e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents 
and XML applications).


> b) Justify the choice of language features (@rules, properties, etc) 
> based on the response to a)
>
> In other words, please ensure the aim, scope and applicability of CSS2.1 
> to XML is very clear. It is currently unclear.

The abstract currently says "CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows 
authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured 
documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications)", is this not clear 
enough? It seems clear to me from this that images (SVG) and chemical data 
(CML) are out of scope.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 29 August 2005 15:02:44 UTC