248063 - ignored/misinterpreted CSS-elements

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[-]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-AT; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040616
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-AT; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040616

Mozilla ignores some CSS-statements: it doesn't see 'inherit' as a valid token
(http://www.w3.org/tr/rec-css2/cascade.html#value-def-inherit) and it is
misinterpreting lengths
(http://www.w3.org/tr/rec-css2/syndata.html#value-def-length) if given with a
leading '+' or '-'.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. create styles using the mentioned features
2. apply them
3. see the results

Actual Results:  
'inherit' is treated illegal and kills the whole statement.
+<value>-lengths are used like <value>-lengths.
-<value>-lengths are ignored.

Expected Results:  
respect the W3C-rec.

Comment 1

[-]

Attachment: sample HTML

Just a little playground for the inherit- and +/- problems.

Comment 2

[Michael Lefevre]

In your attachment, I don't really see what the problem is (using Firefox 0.9,
which is the same base as Mozilla 1.7).  It looks like the inherit is working
correctly, and the "+30pt" does appear as 30pt text.

Could you describe exactly what you see for your sample? Or maybe attach a
screenshot?

Comment 3

[-]

Attachment: Screen copy with embeded comment

Comment 4

[-]

(In reply to comment #2)
>… It looks like the inherit is working
> correctly,

Not fully here. Have a look on the attatchment 151454: the sequence "but blue"
took the color but nothing from the font settings in its class.

> and the "+30pt" does appear as 30pt text.

Sigh - I think I've become a victim of my english knowledge: as I read the
W3C-stuff I understood something like '+x' is giving a result like 'inherit +
x'. Of course I should posish my language skills. But I don't know a place to
train technical terms for HTML and such things.

But as I wrote: the html-file has been my playground. All combinations of params
with inherit I tested failed here, mozilla is trashing the statement with this
term in it (as W3C says, this would be correct *if* inherit woud be an illegal
token). Isn't it?

Comment 5

[Michael Lefevre]

Ok - now that I look, I think that you have misunderstood about the "inherit" too.

The "font:" property is a shorthand for several other properties.  If you look
at the syntax given at
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-shorthand

You can see that "inherit" is an alternative to everything. So you can either say:
font: bold 30pt sans-serif;
or you can say
font: inherit;
but you cannot inherit some parts and not others. To do that, you need to use
font-size:, font-style:, etc separately.

That is because for "font:" you can give the parameters in different orders and
they are optional, so you can have:
"font: bold 30pt sans-serif;"
or 
"font: bold sans-serif 30pt;"
and then if you say "font: 20pt inherit;" it cannot know what you meant to inherit.

Instead, you must say, for example:
"font-weight: bold; font-size: 30pt; font-family: inherit;"

In nearly all cases, you don't need the "inherit", because it will happen
automatically.

So I don't think there is a bug here.

Comment 6

[-]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Ok - now that I look, I think that you have misunderstood about the "inherit" too.
> 
> The "font:" property is a shorthand for several other properties.  If you look
> at the syntax given at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-shorthand

Oh! Yes, after reading your text and having another look at the W3C-doc, I
believe you're right.
But as you tell me, inherit can replace nearly everything. So the
W3C-documentation is a bit - how should I say? Wrong? Not really. But: now I
can't se a real usage for the inherit in the font shorthand property. Why?
Nobody could tell, which part it should replace as long not all of the other
params are noted.
Oops: this does belong to 'normal' too! Or could you tell me, which property is
used if I write down one 'normal'?  Style, variant or weight? Which one would be
altered, which one not? For example, let there be a paragraph set to italic
bolder 12pt serif. Now you would apply a class on it telling 'font: normal 10pt
cursive' - what should be the result?
How do you think about that?

Comment 7

[Michael Lefevre]

"could you tell me, which property is used if I write down one 'normal'?"

You wouldn't do that, because using "font:" resets the values anyway.

For example, if you have a paragraph set to "italic bolder 12pt serif", and then
you specify a class that says "font: bold;", you will get non-italic text in the
default size and variant.  If you give just one "normal", everything will be reset.

The CSS document says:
"All font-related properties are first reset to their initial values... Then,
those properties that are given explicit values in the 'font' shorthand are set
to those values."

So, you either need to use the specific settings (font-variant, font-weight,
etc) to set just one thing, or you can use "font:" and specify all the settings
each time.

Personally I prefer to always use the specific font-family, font-size, font-weight.

Anyway, this is not a good place to discuss CSS.
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?CSS_FAQs has some useful links to information
about CSS, there is a german site at http://www.css-technik.de/ ,  or you could
try the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets newsgroup.

Comment 8

[-]

(In reply to comment #7)
> "could you tell me, which property is used if I write down one 'normal'?"
> 
> You wouldn't do that, because using "font:" resets the values anyway.
…
> The CSS document says:
> "All font-related properties are first reset to their initial values... Then,
> those properties that are given explicit values in the 'font' shorthand are set
> to those values."

But what are 'initial values'? The sentence doesn't say 'reset to everything
off' or so. Initial could be understood as defined by the parent or some default
by the client. I think, that's not absolutely clear.

> So, you either need to use the specific settings (font-variant, font-weight,
> etc) to set just one thing, or you can use "font:" and specify all the settings
> each time.

Problem: what is 'font: normal inherit inherit 120%'. The documentation seems to
say, that is a valid one. But now I think, the syntax is good but the semantics
are lousy.

> Personally I prefer to always use the specific font-family, font-size,
font-weight.

Now I do understand. Thank you!

> Anyway, this is not a good place to discuss CSS.
> http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?CSS_FAQs has some useful links to information
> about CSS, there is a german site at http://www.css-technik.de/ ,  or you could
> try the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets newsgroup.

Thanks for that too. And you're right, let's stop this now.

Have fun with all the bytes :-)

Franz