| I understand the motivation for this attribute, and would like
| to propose a constructive alternative that I believe would provide
| the functionality that the people who wish to include it have
| expressed, and yet resolve the arguments that the people opposed
| to it have also expressed.
---Well, it doesn't address the issue I raised in earlier mailing-list discussion. When I really am doing styling of unique elements, where what I am doing to each element is specific to that element and there is no class of similarly-styled elements, I really want to be able to use anonymous styles rather than having to create pseudo-names and indirect through a stylesheet. I don't want to lose that notational concision in the interest of forcing other people to do the right thing.
My model for stylesheet adoption is that once stylesheet support is in the major browsers, the net will rapidly evolve a relatively small number of standard stylesheets (the browser vendors are the most likely sources for those standards). Once a few common stylesheets are available, the examples people learn from, in books, net tutorials, and common source code, will deomstrate the use of those standards and *most* new authors will simply learn that as the way to write. Ths will be supported by organizational authors who are required by their organizations to write to house styles.
I don't really think the STYLE attribute is going to be all that tempting to the vast bulk of authors, once they have a few examples to look at of putting all the document-wide styling information in one place. Most people don't want to type "<STYLE font=Palatino size=14pt>" on 83 headings if ther's a way to type it once and have it apply to all headings.
The most important thing right now is getting to enough of a consensus that some of the major browsers can implement something portable, so we can start building that body of teachable experience.
scott
-- scott preece motorola/mcg urbana design center 1101 e. university, urbana, il 61801 phone: 217-384-8589 fax: 217-384-8550 internet mail: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com