[whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guiseof HTML attributes.

[Mike Schinkel]

Matthew Raymond wrote:
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
>> Leons Petrazickis wrote:
>>> I think what's wanted is a Cascading Semantics Language.
>> 
>> I'm baffled. Why do we want this? What would it allow us to do?
> 
>    There are people who posted ideas about semantic
> properties for CSS on the www-style mailing list. They would
> likely be ecstatic about turning CSS into a cascading
> semantics language. Personally, this would be a greater
> nightmare than the |role| attribute.
> 
>    However, global attributes like |role| aren't much better.
> Attributes should specify the details of semantics that
> elements already possess.

Why should attributes (only?) specify the details of semantics that elements
already possess?  Is there an axiom or W3C finding that we can reference for
this?

> Generally, though, this is just math. For every attribute
> or role you have that can apply to ALL elements, you have the
> semantics of all those  elements to interact with, plus you
> have interactions between an indefinite number of global
> attributes that may be defined on that element. 

Can you provide some concrete examples where that might cause a problem?

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/