RE: [CSS21] Editorial issues with Ch. 6 (Assigning property values, Cascading, and Inheritance) - comments on Working Draft

On Friday, January 07, 2011 12:46 PM Anton Prowse
> 
> Issue 2: As a result of the resolution of Issue 193,[1] 6.2 now says:
> 
>    # Note that inheritance follows the document tree and is not
>    # intercepted by anonymous boxes.
> 
> As the spec currently stands, this sentence is redundant since properties and
> their specified/computed/used/actual values are associated with elements,
> not boxes.  IMO the new sentence actually introduces confusion where
> there was none before, not least because boxes (let alone anonymous ones)
> are not introduced until a later chapter and there is no hyperlink to the
> relevant definition.
> 
> Note, however, that this sentence could become acceptable (modulo the
> elements vs boxes issue) if something similar to my proposals in [2] are
> adopted.
> 
> 
> Issue 3: In 6.4.3 (Calculating a selector's specificity):
> 
>    # * [...]
>    # * count the number of ID attributes in the selector (= b)
>    # * count the number of other attributes and pseudo-classes in the
>    #   selector (= c)
> 
> This is intended to include instances of the "hash" (#) and "period" (.)
> notation, but even though 5.8.3 (Class selectors) says
> 
>    # Working with HTML, authors may use the period (.) notation as an
>    # alternative to the ~= notation when representing the class
>    # attribute. Thus, for HTML, div.value and div[class~=value] have the
>    # same meaning.
> 
> it's not overly clear from the wording of 6.4.3 that such instances (which lack
> the explicit naming of an attribute) are to be counted.
> 
> Perhaps this could be made clearer.
> 
> Moreover, 6.4.3 goes on to say:
> 
>    # The specificity is based only on the form of the selector. In
>    # particular, a selector of the form "[id=p33]" is counted as an
>    # attribute selector (a=0, b=0, c=1, d=0), even if the id attribute
>    # is defined as an "ID" in the source document's DTD.
> 
> which makes the wording of the second and third bullet points even more
> ambiguous; surely the second bullet point should say "ID selectors"
> rather than "ID attributes", in line with 5.9 (ID Selectors).  Likewise, perhaps
> its sufficient for the third bullet point to say "attribute selectors" rather than
> "other attributes" to address my concern, linking both "ID selectors" and
> "attribute selectors" back to the appropriate sections of Chapter 5.
> 
> [Note that an "attribute selector" or an "ID selector" forms part of – or, in
> Selectors Level 3, is – a "simple selector" which itself may form part of a
> "selector".  The terminology differentiation leaves a little bit to be desired!]
> 
> 
> [1] http://wiki.csswg.org/spec/css2.1#issue-193

> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Jan/0073.html

> 

Thank you for your feedback. The CSSWG resolved not to make these changes to the CSS 2.1 specification[1].

Please respond before 18 March, 2011 if you do not accept the current resolution.

[1] http://w3.org/TR/CSS

Received on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 22:30:05 UTC