Re: draft-ietf-html-style-00.txt

Walter Ian Kaye (boo@best.com)
Wed, 6 Dec 1995 14:35:30 -0800

At 4:15p 12/06/95, David Seibert wrote:
>On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Glenn Adams wrote:
>
>> Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 19:56:00 +0100
>> From: Bert Bos <Bert.Bos@sophia.inria.fr>
>>
>> 2. No style properties in attributes (STYLE="...")
>>
>> The argument for (2) is that it leads to bad design. It may also be a
>> little bit less efficient for future sophisticated browsers. But some
>> people want this facility, so I guess we just have to accept this in
>> HTML.
>>
>> It seems to me that IETF WGs work on a consensus basis. I don't believe
>> there is a consensus on a STYLE attribute. Some people oppose it quite
>> strongly. Therefore, it should be removed. "Some people want this" doesn't
>> cut it!
>
>I agree with Glenn. Since the goal is to have HTML 3.0 be a "final"
>version, it makes sense to include facilities for any type-setting
>effect, no matter how few people want it. Thus, if allowing style
>properties in attributes was necessary to achieve some effect, then it
>would make sense to allow this no matter how many people didn't like it.
>However, this is not a necessity but only a convenience, since the same
>effect can also be obtained by pre-declaring elements of different
>classes, so there is no strong argument for allowing it.

I do all my web authoring by hand in a drag&drop text editor, using stuff
like <font size=+2><B><I>xxx</I></B></font>. I would GLADLY switch to
something like <SPAN STYLE="subhead2">xxx</SPAN> with "subhead2" previously
defined. For those places where direct formatting is needed, we already
have <B>, <I>, <STRONG>, and <EM>. Anything more complex than that is best
defined as a style (class, whatever) anyway.

I definitely want the ability to have one <H2> look one way and another
<H2> look another way in the same document.

I definitely do NOT want a <H2 STYLE="font: Helvetica"> type of tag.

Why use STYLE as the name of the attribute instead of CLASS? Because it
matches the <STYLE> element in the HEAD. It makes no sense to use CLASS
instead, unless you have <CLASS> in the HEAD. In a word: Consistency.

(Should I be telling html-wg this? I don't know who I'm preaching to here!;)

-Walter

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Walter Ian Kaye <boo@best.com> | Excel | FoxPro | AppleScript |
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