Re: Check existence of class names

Although Vladimir and I reached agreement
in an earlier part of this thread, I still see some
places where I think that he and I do not yet agree.

For example, when he writes :

> By a 'non-existent class name' I meant a name of a non existent class,
> not a non existent name of some class.

I do not believe that there is such a thing as a non-existent
class, once one has given it a name.  Consider the following
(taken from the same message) --

> <span class="vcard fn">Albert Einstein</span>

If that were written as

*> <span class="Vcard FN">Albert Einstein</span>

and if it were also the first occurrence of "Vcard"
and "FN", then those classes would exist as soon as
the <span> had been parsed, whilst they would not have
existed prior to that point.  But exactly the same
situation obtains with :

 > <span class="vcard fn">Albert Einstein</span>

If these are the first occurrences of "vcard" and
"fn" in the context of classes, then the classes
"vcard" and "fn" would exist after the <span> was
parsed but not before.  Thus there is no /a priori/
reason (for a validator or similar tool) to believe
that "Vcard" and "FN" are the names of non-existent
classes : their use /creates/ the classes if they
did not previously exist, just as does "vcard" and
"fn".

Philip Taylor

Received on Tuesday, 17 August 2010 16:57:43 UTC