Why aren't styled language repsonsible for pseudo-classes?

It would make sense to me that the underlying languages that are being
styled specify the pseudoclasses they allow. Having CSS specify them
seems to limit the number of pseudoclasses artificially and complicate
the CSS system for all styled documents.

Personally, I would have liked it if CSS didn't specify selectors
either so it could work with non-tree based languages. It seems like a
restriction based on it's  tight coupling with HTML, the only real
language it was meant to style.

Moving on though, if the underlying language provide the
pseudoclasses, then CSS could purge itself of it's few and let each
language do the work for it. It already has to communicate with the
language. This way any language can implement certain funtionality and
get pseudoclass support.

I'm also leaning towards pseudo-elements being done this way, but I'm
not there yet.

Orion Adrian

Received on Monday, 4 July 2005 15:33:12 UTC