Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:03:07 +0000
Address Bert's comments <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Jan/0320.html>
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5 <title>CSS Styling Attribute Syntax Level 1</title>
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14 <h1>CSS Styling Attribute Syntax Level 1</h1>
16 <h2 class="no-num no-toc">[LONGSTATUS] [DATE]</h2>
17 <dl>
18 <dt>This version:</dt>
19 <!-- <dd><dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/[YEAR]/WD-css-style-attr-[CDATE]/">http://www.w3.org/TR/[YEAR]/WD-css-style-attr-[CDATE]/</a></dd> -->
20 <dd><a href="http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-style-attr/">http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-style-attr/</a>
21 <dt>Latest version:
22 <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/css-style-attr">http://www.w3.org/TR/css-style-attr</a>
23 <dt>Previous version:
24 <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css-style-attr-20020515">http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css-style-attr-20020515</a>
25 <dt>Editor:
26 <dd><a href="http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/contact/">Elika J. Etemad</a>
27 <dt>Previous Editors:
28 <dd><span lang="tr">Tantek Çelik</span> (<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft</a>), <<a href="mailto:tantekc@microsoft.com">tantekc@microsoft.com</a>>
29 <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/">Bert Bos</a> (<a href="http://www.w3.org/">W3C</a>), <<a href="mailto:bert@w3.org">bert@w3.org</a>>
30 <dd>Marc Attinasi (AOL/Netscape), <<a href="mailto:attinasi@netscape.com">attinasi@netscape.com</a>>
31 </dl>
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37 </div>
39 <h2 class="no-num no-toc" id="abstract">Abstract</h2>
41 <p>Markup languages such as HTML and SVG provide a styling attribute on most
42 elements, to hold a fragment of a style sheet that applies to those elements.
43 One of the possible style sheet languages is CSS. This draft describes the
44 syntax of the CSS fragment that can be used in the styling attribute.
46 <h2 class="no-num no-toc" id="status">Status of this document</h2>
47 <!--status-->
49 <h2 class="no-num no-toc" id="contents">Table of contents</h2>
50 <!--toc-->
52 <h2 id="intro">Introduction</h2>
54 <p>Some document formats have a <dfn>styling attribute</dfn> to permit
55 the author to directly apply style information to specific elements
56 in documents. If a document format defines a styling attribute and the
57 attribute accepts CSS as its value, then this specification defines this
58 <dfn>CSS styling attribute</dfn>’s syntax and interpretation.
60 <div class="example">
61 <p>The following example shows the use of the <code>style</code> attribute
62 in HTML:</p>
63 <pre><p style="<em>color: #090; line-height: 1.2</em>">...</p></pre>
64 </div>
66 <h2 id="conformance">Conformance</h2>
68 <p>A document or implementation cannot conform to CSS Styling Attribute Syntax
69 Level 1 alone, but can claim conformance to CSS Styling Attribute Syntax Level 1
70 if it satisfies the conformance requirements in this specification when
71 implementing CSS together with styling attribute handling as defined in a
72 document language that has CSS styling attributes.</p>
74 <p>Conformance to CSS Styling Attribute Syntax Level 1 is defined for two
75 classes:
76 <dl>
77 <dt><dfn>document</dfn></dt>
78 <dd>A document represented in a document language that defines a styling
79 attribute for one or more of its elements.
80 <dt><dfn>interpreter</dfn></dt>
81 <dd>Someone or something that interprets the semantics of a document and
82 its associated style information.
83 (Most CSS <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/conform.html#user-agent">user
84 agents</a> fall under this category.)</dd>
85 </dl>
87 <p>The conformance requirements are expressed with a combination of
88 descriptive assertions and RFC 2119 terminology. The key words "MUST",
89 "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
90 "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in the normative parts of this
91 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
92 However, for readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase
93 letters in this specification. All of the text of this specification is
94 normative except sections explicitly marked as non-normative, examples,
95 and notes. [[!RFC2119]]</p>
97 <p>Examples in this specification are introduced with the words "for example"
98 or are set apart from the normative text with <code>class="example"</code>,
99 like this:
101 <div class="example">
102 <p>This is an example of an informative example.</p>
103 </div>
105 <p>Informative notes begin with the word "Note" and are set apart from the
106 normative text with <code>class="note"</code>, like this:
108 <p class="note">Note, this is an informative note.</p>
110 <h2 id="syntax">Syntax and Parsing</h2>
112 <p>The value of the styling attribute must match the syntax of the contents of
113 a CSS <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#rule-sets">declaration
114 block</a>, whose formal grammar is given below in terms of the
115 <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#syntax">CSS core grammar</a>:
117 <pre>
118 declaration-list
119 : S* declaration [ ';' S* declaration ]*
120 ;
121 </pre>
123 <p class="note">Note that following the CSS2.1 convention, comment tokens
124 are not shown in the rule above.
126 <p>The interpreter must parse the styling attribute's value using the
127 same forward-compatible parsing rules that apply to parsing declaration block
128 contents in a normal CSS style sheet. See
129 <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html">chapter 4 of the CSS2.1
130 specification</a> for details. [[!CSS21]]
132 <p class="note">Note that because there is no open brace delimiting the
133 declaration list in the CSS styling attribute syntax, a close brace
134 (<code>}</code>) in the styling attribute's value does not terminate the
135 style data: it is merely an invalid token.</p>
137 <h2 id="interpret">Cascading and Interpretation</h2>
139 <p>The declarations in a styling attribute apply to the element to which
140 the attribute belongs. CSS2.1 <a href="/TR/CSS21/cascade.html#specificity">defines</a>
141 how style sheets and styling attributes are cascaded together. [[!CSS21]]
142 Relative URLs in the style data must be resolved relative to the styling
143 attribute's element (or to the document if per-element resolution is not
144 defined) when the attribute's value is parsed<!-- so dynamic changes to
145 the base URL don't affect the CSS ~Hixie -->.
147 <p>Aside from the differences in cascading, the declarations in a styling
148 attribute must be interpreted exactly as if they were given in a CSS
149 style rule that applies to the element.
151 <p>The CSS Working Group strongly recommends that document languages do
152 not allow multiple CSS styling attributes on a single element. If a document
153 language allows multiple CSS styling attributes, each must be parsed
154 independently and treated as a separate style rule, the ordering of which
155 should be defined by the document language, else is undefined.
157 <h2 id="ack">Acknowledgments</h2>
159 <p>Thanks to feedback from Daniel Glazman, Ian Hickson, Eric A. Meyer,
160 Björn Höhrmann.
162 <h2 id="references">References
164 <h3 class="no-num" id="normative-references">Normative references</h3>
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167 <p>[Here will be inserted the file "normative.inc"]</p>
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170 <h3 class="no-num" id="informative-references">Informative references</h3>
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173 <p>[Here will be inserted the file "informative.inc"]</p>
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