Re: [CSS21] Errata to disallow 'inherit' after comma in 'font-family'

I was wondering for a while if I should post this, as it seems there are 
technical & backwards compatibility reasons behind the decision (which I 
have to admit, I haven’t followed very closely).
FWIW, allowing `inherit` after the font families is tremendously useful. 
It allows authors to set the base font family in the root element, and 
override it only when alternative fonts are present in the system. If 
they are not, it falls back to the root font-family, without having to 
needlessly repeat it and change it in multiple places when the base 
font-family is changed. Of course, there are a number of ways to work 
around this use case (variables, @font-face alias of local() fonts etc) 
but I like its simplicity and elegance. I still remember how weird I 
found it that it wasn’t allowed when I was still new to CSS. So, by 
extrapolating my own experience, I’d speculate that forbidding it, makes 
learning harder.

-- 
Lea Verou (http://lea.verou.me | @LeaVerou)

Received on Saturday, 5 May 2012 13:55:51 UTC