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

Paul Prescod ([email protected])
Thu, 7 Dec 1995 10:29:38 -0500


At 11:56 AM 12/7/95 +0000, lilley wrote:
>Walter Ian Kaye said:
>
>> 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.
>
>A good argument. I think that the intention was to overload class to
>give semantic meaning as well as formatting control.

There was no overload. The intention was to provide a mechanism for
subdividing classes of elements according to your needs. The ability to
apply a particular style to a particular class is a BENEFIT of being able to
define classes, not an "alternate usage".

>However, as the consensus seemed to be away from any list of named
>classes, and since a thesaurus-type system such as Murray-Rust is using
>for CML is unlikely to be an option for all HTML documents,

Maybe not for all, but perhaps for many.

>it seems
>that CLASS will only be used for semantic markup withing focussed
>subject areas where application conventions can be agreed. This means
>that generic search engines, for example, are unlikely to offer
>searching based on CLASS (which was I think the original point).

If CLASS becomes widely used in certain disciplines, then specialized search
engines oriented for that discipline will support it. Why should we care
about "generic" search engines?

Paul Prescod