W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > www-style@w3.org > October 2011

Re: [css3-selectors] Explanation of what an id is should be non-normative

From: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:20:57 -0400
Message-ID: <4E9F8589.4020300@mit.edu>
To: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
CC: www-style list <www-style@w3.org>
On 10/19/11 8:18 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> There is a very simple way to read specifications: if they or their re-
> ferences say anything that contradicts something then there is a problem
> and if there is nothing that contradicts anything then there isn't.

Oh, there's a problem in this case.  At least two people so far have 
independently read this text to mean that in this testcase:

   <style>
     * { color: red }
     #foo { color: green }
   </style>
   <div id="foo">Text</div>
   <div id="foo">Text</div>

should have a green first line and a red second line because the 
requirement that IDs be unique is normative CSS requirement...

> It's perfectly normal to have text that establishes context to help readers
> understand the requirements and we are not going to mark every sentence
> that doesn't contain a conformance requirement as non-normative

I'm not asking for us to do this for every sentence.  I'm asking for us 
to do this for a particular part of the spec that is actively confusing 
people.

-Boris
Received on Thursday, 20 October 2011 02:21:37 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Monday, 23 January 2023 02:14:05 UTC