> I don't like the disappearance of the $CANVAS. Saying that "In HTML, the
> BODY element is given this role" (of acting as the container for all
> elements) falls down when you think about the effects of the default
> stylesheet on HTML 2.0 documents that do not have a <BODY> (or a <HEAD>, or
> an <HTML>).
The reason for changing it is that people are growing accustomed to
setting color/background in the BODY element:
<BODY BGCOLOR=#ffffff>
This would easily be translated into:
<BODY STYLE="background: #ffffff">
As we know, there are better alternatives than the STYLE attribute,
but as long as it's there one should be able to set the background
using it. To set "$CANVAS", a proper style sheet is required.
> The "sidehead" and simple multiple-column effects are an ugly way to achieve
> that effect. [..] I'm not saying
> explicitly disallow it, just not suggest it as a solution for multicolumn
> layouts.
Ok. I agree that "multi-column layout" is setting expectations too
high. The sidehead/sidenote effect is a more reasonable target.
> > - For font-weight and font-size, I appreciate that you've moved from
> > absolute numbers to relative ones. I'm a little concerned,
> > though, that it may not be intuitive that a bare positive number
> > means an increase. I would suggest either requiring "1
> > larger/smaller" ("1 bolder/lighter") or requiring that positive
> > increments be prefixed by a plus sign ("font-weight: +2").
>
> I vote for the second option: relative numbers should be required to be
> prefixed with + or -.
One can suggest the use of +/-, but requireing the '+' would conflict
with the planned expressions of CSS2. What do you do when the value is
not a fixed number but the result of an expression?
> > - for padding, you say "the color of the padding area is controlled
> > with the 'background' property". Wouldn't it be reasonable to add
> > a "padding" pseudo-class.
If you want a differently colored border around an element, you
should use the border-* properties. One could argue that 'border'
should be a pseudo-class (P:border { color: red}), but I prefer to
reserve pseudo-classes for effects that cannot easily be achived in
other ways.
Regards,
-h&kon
Hakon W Lie, W3C/INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
http://www.w3.org/People/howcome howcome@w3.org