Re: How Do I Propose a CSS3 Spec Change?

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> 
> Your previous response seemed to imply that unless we can afford to 
> become a W3C member (or get hired by an existing member company), join 
> the CSSWG and go through the rest of the process, we basically haven't 
> got a chance of being listened to, and that the "informal process" was 
> just a waste of time.  It's good to see that this is not entirely the 
> case.

There was no implication in the e-mail to which you refer. Please don't 
read between the lines of what I write, I rarely imply anything and 
usually say exactly what I mean. :-)

I was just answering the question asked, namely, what the formal process 
was.


> > Similarly, all the Selectors ideas, even those that were dismissed as 
> > crackpot ideas on the mailing list, have been looked at by at least 
> > one of the Selectors editors. The good ones have been further 
> > discussed at face to face meetings. Proposals such as those on how to 
> > deal with table columns in selectors have been given extensive 
> > thought.
> 
> Is there any chance of seeing an overview of these good ones that have 
> been further discussed and are being considered for future CSS specs 
> (not just for selectors) beyond those that get mentioned fairly 
> regularly here, like :matches(), calc(), table selectors, etc., or do we 
> have to wait until they show up in a future working draft?

Well, I don't know about the specs that I'm not an editor for. For the 
ones that I am:

   CSS2.1: Nothing new. We're just fixing the last few editorial issues
   that have been raised. There are no plans for new features to be
   added to CSS level 2.

   Selectors: Nothing new in the current level. We'll be dropping 
   :contains(). The next level won't be coming out for years (it's our
   lowest priority, as I think I mentioned in an earlier mail), but things
   that are being considered are "virtual" attribute selectors, for
   example [#text=foo], [#text*=foo], etc, to replace the :contains()
   functionality; and [#column=2] or similar to obtain the semantic column
   number of a cell (not the actual layout column number; this, like :link
   and other pseudos will rely on namespace-specific knowledge in the UA).
   :matches() is not being considered, at least not seriously, because it
   would be too great a hit on selector matching performance.

   Lists and Generated Content: These are in statis at the moment. Issues 
   and ideas are being recorded but I won't be working on them myself for
   several years (others might take over in the meantime). Footnotes are
   a relatively high priority here, amongst those who care.

Most of the new cool stuff (calc(), position:center, advanced layout ideas 
(text flow, flexible box model), better displacement of line boxes by 
floats, image borders, multiple backgrounds, etc), are in modules that I'm 
not directly working on (the main specs I'm working on are non-CSS specs, 
and indeed not even W3C specs now, namely XBL2 and HTML5).

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

Received on Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:00:55 UTC