编程与软件工程eager.io
差一点成为 CSS 的语言
Languages Which Almost Became CSS
2016 — 2020，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章回顾了 CSS 诞生之前曾竞争成为网页样式标准的多种语言方案，如 CHSS、DSSSL、JavaScript Style Sheets 等，梳理了 90 年代浏览器样式机制的演化史。它展示了 CSS 并非唯一候选，而是多方博弈后的产物。
为什么经久不衰：它揭示了 CSS 之外曾被认真考虑过的设计路径，让人反思今天 Web 样式系统的取舍与历史偶然性。
HN 评论精选
布局应采用声明式约束求解系统，而非过程式方案
布局本应是约束导向的，而不是过程式的。你应该能表达“这个盒子的底部紧邻那个盒子的顶部”这类约束，把它们交给约束引擎生成布局——这也是所见即所得编辑器能自动生成的东西。想感受这种思路，可以试试 Autodesk Inventor 的草图模式：你可以指定点与边重合、边与边重合、指定尺寸、尺寸之间的数值关系等。HTML5 和 CSS 的设计者是过程式思维而非几何思维，这很明显。设计师是几何思维，几何约束系统才符合他们的直觉。
Animats查看英文原文
Layout should have been constraint-oriented, not procedural. You should be able to express "Bottom of this box is adjacent to top of that box", and such. All those constraints go into a constraint engine, and a layout is generated. This is something a WYSIWYG editor can generate. To get a sense of how this could work, try sketch mode in Autodesk Inventor (there's a free 30 day demo) You can specify that a point must be coincident to an edge, that an edge must be coincident to an edge, that something must have specified dimensions, that some dimension must have a numerical relationship with another dimension, etc. Inventor goes further, supporting constraints on diagonal lines, circles, arcs, ellipses, etc. Whether layout should support curves is an interesting question, but the technology exists to make that work. The people who designed HTML5 and CSS thought procedurally, not geometrically. It shows. Designers think geometrically, and a geometric constraint system would make sense to designers.
样式与用户控制权的丧失导致浏览器复杂化和 Chromium 垄断
1991 年 Tim Berners-Lee 公布 HTML 时并没有样式方法，页面如何渲染由浏览器决定，用户偏好也有很大影响。我几乎希望我们仍生活在那样的世界：网页只提供结构和数据，由用户决定如何消费。把 Web 应用塞进分布式超文本文档的模型里，从根本上就是个错误。如果浏览器只负责渲染 HTML，复杂度会大幅消失，也会涌现出各种迎合不同用户偏好的浏览器。正是这种复杂度，让我们走向 Chromium/Blink 的单一文化——只有手握数十亿美元的公司才养得起开发浏览器的团队。
RcouF1uZ4gsC查看英文原文
> When HTML was announced by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 there was no method of styling pages. How given HTML tags were rendered was determined by the browser, often with significant input from the user’s preferences. I almost wished we still lived in this world, where the web pages provides the structure and data, and I as the user get to decide how I want to consume it. I think trying to cram web applications into the same model as distributed, hyperlinked documents was fundamentally a mistake. If a browser was just about rendering html, a significant amount of complexity would have disappeared, and you would have a multitude of different browsers, all catering to different preferences in how you wanted to consume html. It is due in large part to the complexity, that we are going towards to monoculture of Chromium/Blink, because only companies with billions of cash in the bank, can afford to dedicate the teams needed to develop a web browser.
纠正史实：最早的图形浏览器是 Tim Berners-Lee 基于 NeXTSTEP 的 WorldWideWeb
与流行认知相反，Mosaic 并不是第一个图形浏览器，它之前有 ViolaWWW——但 ViolaWWW 也不是第一个。事实上 Tim Berners-Lee 爵士的第一款浏览器就已经是图形化的（后来还带上了 FrontPage/Dreamweaver 式的所见即所得编辑模式），这得益于先进的 NeXTSTEP 操作系统及其窗口构建 IDE（即如今 macOS 和 XCode 的前身）。
frik查看英文原文
> Contrary to popular perception, Mosaic was not the first graphical browser. It was predated by ViolaWWW Neither was ViolaWWW the first grahical browser. In fact the very first browser by Sir Tim Berners-Lee was already a graphical browser (even with WYSIWYG edit mode later known from Frontpage/Dreamweaver) - made possible by thr advanced NeXTSTEP operating system and its window builder IDE (nowadays known as OSX/macOS and XCode respectively): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP
SGML 的链接过程声明本可实现类似 CSS 的样式机制
技术上，SGML 有一个叫链接过程声明的原生机制，可以为文档标记指定样式属性。除了这个简单例子，样式属性还能以上下文相关的方式指定，比如打印时的奇偶页，实际上能覆盖 CSS 选择器的大部分能力（不含 :hover 这类“魔法”伪属性）。我一直不明白，既然有常规的 HTML 属性可用，为什么大家认为需要为 CSS 属性单独搞一套属性体系。
tannhaeuser查看英文原文
Technically, there is a native SGML mechanism called link process declaration (without DSSSL) for assigning style properties to document markup. Looks as follows: <!DOCTYPE html [ <!-- ... declarations for HTML elements, attributes ... --> ]> <!LINKTYPE render html #IMPLIED [ <!ATTLIST a color (blue|red) #IMPLIED> <!LINK #INITIAL a [ color=blue ]> ]> <html> <title>Blue link</title> <p>this <a href=x.html> link</a> is rendered in blue color</p> </html> Beyond this trivial example, style properties (link attributes) can be assigned in a context-dependent way for eg even/odd pages in print, or actually capture the largest part of CSS selectors (sans pseudo-attributes such as :hover though which are "magical" in CSS). I always wondered why people believed we need a distinct property universe for CSS properties when regular HTML attributes are there for this exact purpose (in link processes, attributes reuse regular content attribute declaration syntax).
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