Re: Up-to-date CSS 3 grammar

L. David Baron wrote:

>So the spec grammars aren't particularly useful for
>implementation, and never have been.

After wasting a few days on them, I came to the same conclusion.
Interestingly enough, the grammar is still in CSS 2.1 Working Draft,
though now - fair enough - it says in the introductory text something to
the effect that the grammar is not really useful for implementation, and
doesn't describe CSS 2.1, but some superset, and that actually the
textual chapters on all the Syntax topics are the ones to follow. Yet -
it's still normative!  

>That said, those implementations that have written their CSS parsers
>using flex or similar tools probably have such a grammar.

I'd be interested to see such a grammar that fully implements CSS2.1
Syntax. I didn't get it to work and we finally rolled our own recursive
descent parser.

>For what it's worth, I don't know of a formal grammar that accurately
>reflects the forward-compatible parsing rules.  The ones published in
>CSS1, CSS2, and css3-syntax don't.  I'd like css3-syntax to eventually
>do so.

With css3-syntax having a "Low Priority", that will be a long way until
it happens. Which I find strikingly funny, because isn't the CSS syntax
the foundation of working with CSS to begin with?

I have raised my issues against CSS21-syntax in message <http://
lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2005Jul/0377>. I see that I made
a mistake then in using the "current version" links to the spec in that
email, but since the most current WD hasn't changed for the vast
majority of the issues listed, the links are still reasonably accurate.

Regards, Christian.

Received on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 20:30:47 UTC