[CS21] Updated WD: Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1

The (implementation) issues that we found during the last CR period of 
CSS level 2 have resulted in enough changes to the text of the 
specification that a new call for comments is in order:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-CSS2-20101207/

Nevertheless, based on the testing that we have done so far against 
implementations, we expect that the next version can be a Proposed 
Recommendation, unless, of course, the comments uncover an unexpected 
remaining flaw...

The deadline for comments is January 7.

When you send comments, please send them to this mailing list, 
<www-style@w3.org>, and include

    [CSS21]

in the subject.


To help with the review, appendix C contains descriptions of all 
(non-trivial) changes since the version of 1998. And in particular 
section C.7[1] contains the changes relative to the last CR.

You can also look at the "diff" file[2], which has all the changed text 
highlighted (but its readability rather varies from chapter to 
chapter).

Some important changes are:

  - Stricter error recovery: A UA must no longer accept only valid
    extensions, but also handle syntactically invalid input exactly as
    the spec prescribes.

  - No absolute units anymore, except in print media. The units cm, in,
    pt, pc, and mm are no longer the ISO units, but are aliases for
    a certain number of px (96px in the case of in). The px itself is
    undefined (except in print media), but the previous definition is
    recommended.

  - The position of list bullets that would previously overlap floating
    elements, or that belong to list items with scrollbars, is made
    largely undefined, in preparation for new definitions in level 3.

  - Font family names containing numbers or punctuation must now be
    quoted. (Some browsers had trouble with declarations
    like 'font-family: Univers 56'.)

  - XML and HTML5 do not automatically remove insignificant white space,
    unlike SGML and HTML4, so CSS itself now defines what white space to
    ignore, specifically inside table elements, to avoid that HTML5
    documents create unexpected, empty table cells.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-CSS2-20101207/changes.html#errata3
[2] http://www.w3.org/Style/css2-updates/WD-CSS2-20101207-20090908-diff/



For the CSS WG,
Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 8 December 2010 17:08:30 UTC