[css-page-3] Whitespace between @page and page selector

[xfq]

In § 4.3. @page rule grammar of css-page-3:

@page { ... }
@page :left { ... }
@page :right { ... }
@page LandscapeTable { ... }
@page CompanyLetterHead:first { ... } /*  identifier and pseudo page. */
@page:first { ... }
@page toc, index { ... }
@page :blank:first { ... }

I'm wondering if @page:first { ... } is correct or not?

[tabatkins]

That's probably unintentional, but it's also technically valid. The grammar doesn't explicitly require whitespace between @page and the following stuff, so per the standard grammar rules, all that's required is that the tokenizer properly separate things. @page:first correctly tokenizes (as AT-KEYWORD DELIM IDENT), so it should parse.

[tabatkins]

How do implementations handle this?

[faceless2]

• We allow it
• Prince allows it
• VivlioStyle allows it

They are the only three I tested.

Edit: it was allowed in CSS2.1 (ref) and is tested by page-grammar-001.xht and page-grammar-002.xht.

So I think you could reasonably conclude that this is both intentional and allowed. Closeable?

[tabatkins]

Thanks, I'm gonna go ahead and close this, then, since absent any prose requiring whitespace there, this is definitely valid per CSS Syntax and the Value Definition Syntax for blocks.