RE: 'initial' | 'inherit' inconsistency

I strongly agree with Eric. 

I'd like to see them listed everywhere; since we don't want to redefine what they do everytime, 
it's fine for the keywords to link to the relevant section of CSS3 Values & Units.

That this causes confusion is not at all theoretical; the lack of clarity from these silently implied values 
resulted in bugs early in the IE9 cycle.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Eric A. Meyer
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 11:17 AM
To: Tab Atkins Jr.
Cc: www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: 'initial' | 'inherit' inconsistency

At 10:58 AM -0700 10/28/10, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

>It is somewhat inconsistent, but CSS3 Values & Units makes the 
>definitive statement that all properties everywhere accept 'inherit'
>and 'initial', and defines what that means.

    Yes, but not many modules reference it, which makes whatever it says inapplicable in those cases, does it not?  And then there's the cases where properties explicitly define an 'initial' that might be at odds with the universal 'initial' that Values & Units defines. 
It's fairly hard to tell.  It also implies that any property that explicitly lists 'inherit' could be defining something different than the universal 'inherit'.  Maybe they aren't, but do we know?  For sure?
    I'm still firmly on the side of explicitly listing them on each property definition rather than relying on a blanket statement located somewhere other than the property definition.  Doing so greatly reduces the chances of confusion.

-- 
Eric A. Meyer (eric@meyerweb.com)     http://meyerweb.com/

Received on Thursday, 28 October 2010 20:40:49 UTC