Multiple Validator Issues

I would like to report a pair of issues that I have encountered with 
the W3C's current version of the CSS validator.

First, I am quite puzzled as to why the official W3C validator does not 
support the CSS 2.1 standard.  I have read some of the archived 
messages, and I realize that CSS 2.1 is still officially "only" a 
candidate recommendation, but as I understand it, it already has 
reasonably wide adoption among at least some of the modern browsers.  
(And isn't the practice of some web designers implementing new 
standards early on their websites part of what drives the adoption of 
those standards on the popular browsers?  -- Well, with the exception 
of one, anyway?...)

Additionally, seeing as how the CSS 2.1 standard has already been a 
candidate recommendation for more than a year, I believe that it could 
become a source of confusion to non-designers who follow the links from 
websites that are claiming valid CSS -- and indeed *are* using valid 
CSS -- but are presented a bunch of errors because the official 
validator doesn't understand CSS 2.1.  This could end up causing more 
confusion and perhaps even a poor impression of the management of the 
W3C's standards, at least as far as CSS is concerned.  (My personal 
expectation would be that any tool provided by the W3C would be able to 
understand any of that same group's standards.)  Besides, if various 
web enthusiasts are campaigning for Microsoft to adopt the CSS 2.1 
standard for Internet Explorer 7, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect 
the validator to support it also?

(I do realize that much of the work on the CSS Validator is a volunteer 
effort.  I unfortunately have very little experience in writing 
programming code -- however, I would be willing to try and pitch in in 
any way, if necessary -- provided I could get some good pointers on 
where I need to start. ;-))

My second issue is a more mundane bug that I think I have discovered.  
I have the following stylesheet created specifically for handheld 
devices (located at 
<http://www.st-minutiae.com/styles/media-handheld.css>), which includes 
a rule to reset the list-style-type property.  The rule in that 
stylesheet is as follows:

ul#navigation > li {
	display: list-item !important;
	list-style-type: inherit;
}

However, the CSS validator returns the following error: "Invalid number 
: list-style-type inherit is not a list-style-type value  : inherit ".  
It also provides a link to the CSS 2(.0) specification for the 
list-style-type property... but the CSS 2 spec specifically allows the 
"inherit" value!

Is this indeed a bug?

Thanks,
Dan Carlson

Received on Thursday, 7 April 2005 01:14:45 UTC