

RE: Named Styles

From: Jelks Cabaniss <jelks@jelks.nu>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 22:13:34 -0400
To: <www-style@w3.org>
Message-ID: <000d01bdfd61$9292ef40$a56c9bd0@jelks.jones.com>
> > I would like to contribute one suggestion: named styles -- just like
> > in MS Word, Pagemaker, etc.

> I don't quite see what you are looking for.
> Can't you do this with <LINK REL="Alternate Stylesheet"> ?

Have you ever used named styles in Word?  Instead of using the default Heading
1, Normal, etc., you create your own styles (they can be block and inline
styles), then you can select text and apply those styles.  Many (probably most)
people don't bother with named styles, because they don't know about them;
instead, they just apply the formatting directly (bold, italic, different font,
whatever).  But if you are using named styles, it's similar to using CLASS
attributes in HTML in that if you want to change the look of something, you only
have to do it in *one* place: the style definition.

You can *sort of* do that now with CLASS styling in CSS.  But CLASS properly
used (IMO) should really apply to semantics, like <p class="legal">...  What you
end up with today is a lot of stuff like <p class="ItalicRed"> which implies
that CLASS means STYLE information.

You *may* want to style a particular CLASS, but you also may not care about what
*type* of paragraph it is, just what it *looks* like ..."

Names are also things you can refer to later, like variables in a program.

Named Styles are just like CLASS names, except different. :)

Received on Wednesday, 21 October 1998 22:19:53 GMT
