Posted by Ben C on 10/27/06 09:51

On 2006-10-27, Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
> Ben C wrote:
>
>> You can safely say, for example, that a conforming UA will not place
>> right floats to the left of left floats (in the same block formatting
>> context). If that isn't an expectation about how a document will be
>> rendered, then I don't know what is.
>
> This is perhaps a safe statement to say, but it's also an obscure case
> and so is largely unhelpful.

It was just an example. But it's not particularly obscure, it's part of
the definition of right floats-- that they go to the right.

> As it's only possible safely to say these pathological cases with any
> certainty, and it's not possible to be so precise about the many less
> definite cases, then it's not a particularly useful operation to spend
> considerable time defining the small subset of CSS rendering that it's
> possible to define so forthrightly. Even if it were done, it still
> wouldn't be of much help as it leaves far too much unsaid.

I don't understand. CSS does specify quite forthrightly all manner of
aspects of rendering, and you can have detailed expectations about what
conforming UAs will do.

This applies both to fluid layouts and to pixel exact layouts, both of
which are possible in CSS (although you don't have pixel-exact control
over fonts).

> Is there really much issue over multiple interpretations of the CSS
> spec anyway, as opposed to mis-interpretations (IE box model) that can
> be cleared up by more careful study of the spec alone?

I don't think so. I think as you say, the problems are mostly just
non-conformance. The spec is generally not ambiguous.

> We have a real problem with lack of clarity and the second problem,
> but not (IMHO) the first.

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