On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, John L. Clark wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 05:49:45PM -0000, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> > (1) when applying a style to something that already has a style, we
> > first remove all attributes and properties associated with the old
> > style and only then add the attributes and properties of the new
> > style. In the past we simply applied the properties of the new style
> > over all existing properties which meant that the result was not the
> > formating of the new style but a union of all previously used styles.
>
> Looking at the bug report, and the nature of this fix, does this remove
> the need for the "Normal Clean" styles and that strategy of using
> styles?
I invented "Normal Clean" because I thought that styles were MEANT to be
mixed. ie If a property is undefined in style, the style should NOT change
the these properties.
Think of a style with a single property say, style "german" with the
single property, "lang:DE_de", then applying that style to a paragraph
with italics, would only set the language property and leave the italics
intact. If it behaves by changing properties not defined ithe "german:
style then the italics are wiped out.
We had a long discussion about this on the list and I think that styles
should not change undefined properties. This has other censequences though
so I would like to get this cleared up once and for all.
What should happen if I apply style "german" to the paragraph with
italics. Are the italics wiped out?
Cheers
Martin
>
> One long standing question of mine was why list information should be
> contained in a style at all. It seems to violate the standard
> definition of a style, and I think it would make sense only as an
> attribute of a paragraph, or - and this may just be my html background
> speaking - as a separate element structure altogether. I think the
> latter would be better. I could make an argument to this effect, if it
> would be desirable. As it seems to be a long-established fact of our
> document structure, though, I would initially just be curious to know
> the motivation behind the decision.
I agree that list defintions need not be styles. It was initially done
that way for convenience. We've gradually been moving away from that.
I agree that list-styles should not be in the drop-down box.
Cheers
Martin
