Re: [CSS21] Please endorse xml:id

On 6/25/05, Andrew Fedoniouk <news@terrainformatica.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>
> To: "Norman Walsh" <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>
> Cc: <www-style@w3.org>
> Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 5:37 PM
> Subject: Re: [CSS21] Please endorse xml:id
> 
> 
> |
> | On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Norman Walsh wrote:
> | >
> | > I think it would be of benefit to the community if the CSS 2.1 draft
> | > suggested that implementations of CSS 2.1 applied to XML documents
> | > <rfc2119>should</rfc2119> support the xml:id specification.
> |
> | It's not appropriate for a spec to take positions on other technologies.
> | Technologies should succeed or fail on their own merits, not because they
> | were dragged kicking and screaming into implementations by virtue of other
> | specs requiring them.
> |
> | CSS doesn't require particular graphics, video, or audio formats; it
> | doesn't require the DOM or any particular scripting environment; it
> | doesn't require the CSSOM; it doesn't even require XML or HTML. Which is
> | perfectly sensible, since CSS is orthogonal from both and can be applied
> | to any tree-based system. I believe the only technologies that CSS
> | requires are UTF-8 and the Unicode Bidi algorithm -- the former is
> | required because you have to represent CSS in _some_ common form if you
> | want interoperability, and the second is required because CSS supports
> | bidi layout and thus has to reference some bidi algorithm (or invent its
> | own, which seems suboptimal).
> |
> | Given the above, it would be very strange indeed for xml:id support to be
> | required. Why not, say, xml:base? Or XInclude? Or XHTML, XForms, XFrames?
> |
> | In any case, it makes no difference what we require. Implementators ignore
> | this kind of requirement if it isn't in line with what they want to
> | implement. To exit CR we need to show two interoperable implementations;
> | we'd just end up dropping any requirement like this that wasn't met. And
> | that begs the question: why have such requirements in the first place?
> |
> 
> Ian, having these two statements:
> 
> "CSS is orthogonal from both and can be applied to any tree-based system."
> and "To exit CR we need to show two interoperable implementations"
> 
> Suppose I have implementation of system of UI widgets configurable by
> It is a) tree based b) uses CSS level 2.1 but not in full just because
> some attributes do not fit in the model.
> 
> This system cannot be considered as "interoperable implementation" just
> because it cannot demonstrate CSS in full.
> 
> Therefore "interoperable implementation" means implementation of HTML
> renderer with CSS 2.1. Too many features there are HTML specific or with
> HTML only in mind.
> 
> Am I right?
> 

Basically yes.

> Andrew Fedoniouk.
> http://terrainformatica.com
>

Received on Sunday, 26 June 2005 03:15:41 UTC