Re: [css21] 'font-family' should disallow 'inherit' in font names more strictly

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> Right now, 2.1 says the following about using 'inherit' in a font name:
> 
> # The keywords 'initial' and 'default' are reserved for
> # future use and must also be quoted when used as
> # font names.
> 
> This isn't strict enough, and implementations do somewhat different
> things around this.  See Kenny's email at
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012Apr/0080.html>
> where he shows several differences in implementations, where some UAs
> accept 'inherit' as part of a font-name, or even as an entire
> font-name in some circumstances.
> 
> We propose tightening this up, since there's no use-case for using
> unquoted 'inherit' in a font name, to:

I really don't see why this is important.  Non-interoperable behavior for
edge cases that will never occur in practice is undesirable but I don't think
it warrants much attention.  You've marked the topic as a CSS 2.1 topic but
I see absolutely no reason to revisit this portion of CSS 2.1.  Fix it in a
future spec (CSS3 Values, Fonts, whatever).

> > The keywords 'initial' and 'default' are reserved for
> > future use and must also be quoted when used _in_
> > font names.

This is equally imprecise, it implies that only the keywords are
quoted when what you mean to say is that font family names
*containing* these keywords must be quoted.

Cheers,

John Daggett

Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 06:03:17 UTC