Re: [css3-writing-modes] direction vs. writing mode in markup vs. style

On 10/25/2010 11:33 AM, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> Also sprach fantasai:
>
>   >      (The 'direction' property does not actually belong in CSS: it exists
>   >      in CSS in order to allow the HTML 'dir' attribute's functionality
>   >      for raw XML documents. This use case probably should have been
>   >      addressed with an xml:dir attribute rather than with CSS.)
>
> I agree that users and authors probably never should use the
> 'direction' property, but I disagree that it doesn't belong in CSS.
> It's used in the default style sheet for HTML [1]; a formatter needs
> to know the direction of the text in order to display it and CSS is a
> handy way to convey that information. Likewise, I think it would have
> been better to convey link information through CSS than to create
> xlink:href. But that's a different story.
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/sample.html

Features that are needed at the UA level but not supposed to be used
at the author or user level don't really need to be supported as
standard CSS properties. :) Certainly the functionality needs to be
there, but it didn't need to be expressed through CSS; it could have
been coded in C++, a hidden vendor-prefixed property, or whatever
else was convenient for that implementation.

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 25 October 2010 22:09:45 UTC