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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/loose.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Syntax and basic data types</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style/default.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/W3C-WD.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="prev" href="conform.html">
<link rel="next" href="selector.html">
<link rel="contents" href="cover.html#minitoc">
<link rel="CSS-properties" href="propidx.html" ti
93D4
tle="properties">
<link rel="index" href="indexlist.html" title="index">
<link rel="first" href="cover.html">
<meta name="editor" lang="tr" content="Tantek Çelik">
<style type="text/css">
span.colorsquare { float:left; width:5em; height:3em; text-align:center; padding:1.2em 0 .8em }
span.colorname { font-weight:bold }
div.colordiagram { width:25em; height:20em; margin:1em auto; font-family:Verdana,sans-serif; font-size:12px }
div.diagramrow { height:5em }
</style>
<style type="text/css">
.current,.proposed,span.delcurrent { background:#feb }
ins.proposed,span.insproposed { background:#bfb }
del.proposed,span.delproposed { background:#fbb }
span.insproposed { text-decoration:underline }
span.delproposed,span.delcurrent { text-decoration:line-through }
body>del,body>ins {display:block}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="navbar">
<p><a href="conform.html">previous</a>
<a href="selector.html">next</a>
<a href="cover.html#minitoc">contents</a>
<a href="propidx.html">properties</a>
<a href="indexlist.html">index</a>
</div>
<hr class="navbar">
<h1><a name="q0">4 Syntax and basic data types</a></h1>
<div class="subtoc">
<p><strong>Contents</strong>
<ul class="toc">
<li class="tocline2"><a href="syndata.html#syntax" class="tocxref">4.1 Syntax</a>
<ul class="toc">
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#tokenization" class="tocxref">4.1.1 Tokenization</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#keywords" class="tocxref">4.1.2 Keywords</a>
<ul class="toc">
<li class="tocline4"><a href="syndata.html#q4" class="tocxref">4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions</a>
<li class="tocline4"><a href="syndata.html#q5" class="tocxref">4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes</a>
</ul>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q6" class="tocxref">4.1.3 Characters and case</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q7" class="tocxref">4.1.4 Statements</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#at-rules" class="tocxref">4.1.5 <span class="index-def" title="at-rule"> At-rules</span></a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#block" class="tocxref">4.1.6 Blocks</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q10" class="tocxref">4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#declaration" class="tocxref">4.1.8 Declarations and properties</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#comments" class="tocxref">4.1.9 Comments</a>
</ul>
<li class="tocline2"><a href="syndata.html#parsing-errors" class="tocxref">4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors</a>
<li class="tocline2"><a href="syndata.html#values" class="tocxref">4.3 Values</a>
<ul class="toc">
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q15" class="tocxref">4.3.1 Integers and real numbers</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#length-units" class="tocxref">4.3.2 Lengths</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#percentage-units" class="tocxref">4.3.3 Percentages</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#uri" class="tocxref">4.3.4 URL + URN = URI</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#counter" class="tocxref">4.3.5 Counters</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#color-units" class="tocxref">4.3.6 Colors</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#strings" class="tocxref">4.3.7 Strings</a>
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q22" class="tocxref">4.3.8 Unsupported Values</a>
</ul>
<li class="tocline2"><a href="syndata.html#q23" class="tocxref">4.4 CSS style sheet representation</a>
<ul class="toc">
<li class="tocline3"><a href="syndata.html#q24" class="tocxref">4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character encoding</a>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
<h2>4.1 <a name="syntax">Syntax</a></h2>
<p>This section describes a grammar (and <a name="x0"><span class="index-def"
title="forward-compatible parsing"><dfn>forward-compatible
parsing</dfn></span></a> rules) common to any version of CSS (including
CSS 2.1). Future versions of CSS will adhere to this core syntax,
although they may add additional syntactic constraints.
</p>
<p>These descriptions are normative. They are also
complemented by the normative grammar rules presented in <a
href="grammar.html">Appendix G</a>.
</p>
<h3>4.1.1 <a name="tokenization">Tokenization</a></h3>
<p>All levels of CSS — level 1, level 2, and any future levels — use
the same core syntax. This allows UAs to parse (though not completely
understand) style sheets written in levels of CSS that didn't exist at
the time the UAs were created. Designers can use this feature to
create style sheets that work with older user agents, while also
exercising the possibilities of the latest levels of CSS.
</p>
<p>At the lexical level, CSS style sheets consist of a sequence of tokens.
The list of tokens for CSS 2.1 is as follows. The definitions use Lex-style
regular expressions. Octal codes refer to ISO 10646 (<a href="refs.html#ref-ISO10646" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[ISO10646]</span></a>). As in
Lex, in case of multiple matches, the longest match determines the token.
</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr><th>Token </th><th>Definition</th></tr>
</thead>
<tr><td colspan=2><hr></td></tr>
<tr><td>IDENT </td><td><code><var>{ident}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>ATKEYWORD </td><td><code>@<var>{ident}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>STRING </td><td><code><var>{string}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>INVALID </td><td><code><var>{invalid}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>HASH </td><td><code>#<var>{name}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>NUMBER </td><td><code><var>{num}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>PERCENTAGE </td><td><code><var>{num}</var>%</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>DIMENSION </td><td><code><var>{num}{ident}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>URI </td><td><code>url\(<var>{w}{string}{w}</var>\)<br>
|url\(<var>{w}</var>([!#$%&*-~]|<var>{nonascii}</var>|<var>{escape}</var>)*<var>{w}</var>\)</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>UNICODE-RANGE </td><td><code>U\+[0-9A-F?]{1,6}(-[0-9A-F]{1,6})?</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>CDO </td><td><code><!--</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>CDC </td><td><code>--></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>; </td><td><code>;</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>{ </td><td><code>\{</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>} </td><td><code>\}</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>( </td><td><code>\(</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>) </td><td><code>\)</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>[ </td><td><code>\[</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>] </td><td><code>\]</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>S </td><td><code>[ \t\r\n\f]+</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>COMMENT </td><td><code>\/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>FUNCTION </td><td><code><var>{ident}</var>\(</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>INCLUDES </td><td><code>~=</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>DASHMATCH </td><td><code>|=</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>DELIM </td><td><var>any other character not matched by
the above rules, and neither a single nor a double quote</var>
</td></tr></table>
<p>The macros in curly braces ({}) above are defined as follows:
</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr><th>Macro </th><th>Definition</th></tr>
</thead>
<tr><td colspan=2><hr></td></tr>
<tr><td>ident </td><td><code>[-]?<var>{nmstart}</var><var>{nmchar}*</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>name </td><td><code><var>{nmchar}+</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>nmstart </td><td><code>[_a-zA-Z]|<var>{nonascii}</var>|<var>{escape}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>nonascii</td><td><code>[^\0-\177]</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>unicode </td><td><code>\\[0-9a-f]{1,6}(\r\n|[ \n\r\t\f])?</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>escape </td><td><code><var>{unicode}</var>|\\[^\n\r\f0-9a-f]</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>nmchar </td><td><code>[_a-zA-Z0-9-]|<var>{nonascii}</var>|<var>{escape}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>num </td><td><code>[0-9]+|[0-9]*\.[0-9]+</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>string </td><td><code><var>{string1}</var>|<var>{string2}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>string1 </td><td><code>\"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|<var>{escape}</var>)*\"</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>string2 </td><td><code>\'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|<var>{escape}</var>)*\'</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>invalid </td><td><code><var>{invalid1}</var>|<var>{invalid2}</var></code></td></tr>
<tr><td>invalid1</td><td><code>\"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|<var>{escape}</var>)*</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>invalid2</td><td><code>\'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|<var>{escape}</var>)*</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>nl </td><td><code>\n|\r\n|\r|\f</code></td></tr>
<tr><td>w </td><td><code>[ \t\r\n\f]*</code></td></tr>
</table>
<p>Below is the core syntax for CSS. The sections that follow describe
how to use it. <a href="grammar.html">Appendix G</a> describes a
more restrictive grammar that is closer to the CSS level 2 language.
</p>
<pre>
stylesheet : [ CDO | CDC | S | statement ]*;
statement : ruleset | at-rule;
at-rule : ATKEYWORD S* any* [ block | ';' S* ];
block : '{' S* [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* | ';' S* ]* '}' S*;
ruleset : selector? '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*;
selector : any+;
declaration : DELIM? property S* ':' S* value;
property : IDENT;
value : [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* ]+;
any : [ IDENT | NUMBER | PERCENTAGE | DIMENSION | STRING
| DELIM | URI | HASH | UNICODE-RANGE | INCLUDES
| DASHMATCH | FUNCTION S* any* ')'
| '(' S* any* ')' | '[' S* any* ']' ] S*;
</pre>
<p><a name="comment">COMMENT</a> tokens do not occur
in the grammar (to keep it readable), but any number of these tokens
may appear anywhere between other tokens.
</p>
<p>The token S in the grammar above stands for <a
name="whitespace">whitespace</a>. Only the characters "space" (U+0020), "tab" (U+0009), "line feed" (U+000A), "carriage return" (U+000D), and
"form feed" (U+000C) can occur in whitespace. Other space-like characters,
such as "em-space" (U+2003) and "ideographic space" (U+3000), are never part of whitespace.
</p>
<p>The meaning of input that cannot be tokenized or parsed is
undefined in CSS 2.1.
</p>
<h3>4.1.2 <a name="keywords">Keywords</a></h3>
<p>Keywords have the form of identifiers. Keywords must not be placed
between quotes ("..." or '...'). Thus,
</p>
<pre>
red
</pre>
<p>is a keyword, but
</p>
<pre>
"red"
</pre>
is not. (It is a <a href="#strings">string</a>.) Other illegal examples:
<div class="illegal-example"><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P>
<pre><code>
width: "auto";
border: "none";
background: "red";
</code></pre>
</div>
<h4 id="vendor-keywords"><a name="q4">4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions</a></h4>
<p>In CSS2.1, identifiers may begin with '<code
class="css">-</code>' (dash) or '<code
class="css">_</code>' (underscore). Keywords and property names, beginning with <code class="css">-</code>' or '<code
class="css">_</code>' are reserved for vendor-specific extensions. Such vendor-specific extensions should have one of the following formats:
</p>
<pre>
'-' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name
'_' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name
</pre>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P>
<p>For example, if XYZ organization added a property to describe the color of the
border on the East side of the display, they might call it <span
class="css">-xyz-border-east-color</span>.
</p>
<p>Other known examples:</p>
<pre>
-moz-box-sizing
-moz-border-radius
-wap-accesskey
</pre>
</div>
<p>An initial dash or underscore is guaranteed never to be used in a property or keyword by any current or future level of CSS. Thus typical CSS implementations may not
recognize such properties and may ignore them according to the <a
href="#parsing-errors">rules for handling parsing errors</a>. However, because the initial dash or underscore is part of the grammar, CSS2.1 implementers should always be able to use a CSS-conforming parser, whether or not they support any vendor-specific extensions.
</p>
<h4 id="vendor-keyword-history"><a name="q5">4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes</a></h4>
<p>This section is informative.</p>
<p>At the time of writing, the following prefixes are known to exist:</p>
<table border='1'>
<thead><tr><th>prefix</th><th>organization</th><th>notes</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td><code>mso-</code></td><td>Microsoft Corporation</td><td>Created before the working group established a naming convention for extensions.</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>-moz-</code></td><td>The Mozilla Organization</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>-o-</code></td><td>Opera Software</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>-atsc-</code></td><td>Advanced Television Standards Committee</td></tr>
<tr><td><code>-wap-</code></td><td>The WAP Forum</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Vendor/organization specific extensions should be avoided.</p>
<h3><a name="q6">4.1.3 Characters and case</a></h3>
<p> The following rules always hold:</p>
<ul>
<li> All CSS style sheets are <a name="x1"><span class="index-inst" title="case
sensitivity">case-insensitive</span></a>, except for parts that are
not under the control of CSS. For example, the case-sensitivity of
values of the HTML attributes "id" and "class", of font names, and
of URIs lies outside the scope of this specification. Note in
particular that element names are case-insensitive in HTML, but
case-sensitive in XML.
</li>
<li> In CSS 2.1, <span class="index-def"
title="identifier|identifier, definition of"><a
name="value-def-identifier"><dfn>identifiers</dfn></a></span>
(including element names, classes, and IDs in <a
href="selector.html">selectors</a>) can contain only the
characters [A-Za-z0-9] and ISO 10646 characters U+00A1 and higher,
plus the hyphen (-) and the underscore (_); they cannot start with
a digit, or a hyphen followed by a digit.
Only properties, values, units, pseudo-classes,
pseudo-elements, and at-rules may <em>start</em> with a hyphen (-); other
identifiers (e.g. element names, classes, or IDs) may not.
Identifiers can also contain escaped characters and any ISO 10646
character as a numeric code (see next item).
<span class="example">For instance, the identifier "B&W?" may
be written as "B\&W\?" or "B\26 W\3F".</span>
<p>Note that Unicode is code-by-code equivalent to ISO 10646 (see
<a href="refs.html#ref-UNICODE" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[UNICODE]</span></a> and <a href="refs.html#ref-ISO10646" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[ISO10646]</span></a>).
</p>
</li>
<li> In CSS 2.1, a backslash (\) character indicates three types of
<span class="index-def" title="backslash escapes">
<a name="escaped-characters">character escapes</a></span>.
<p>First, inside a <a href="#strings">string</a>, a backslash
followed by a newline is ignored (i.e., the string is deemed not
to contain either the backslash or the newline).
</p>
<p>Second, it cancels the meaning of special CSS characters.
Any character (except a hexadecimal digit) can be escaped
with a backslash to remove its special meaning.
For example, <samp>"\""</samp> is a string consisting of one
double quote. Style sheet preprocessors must not remove
these backslashes from a style sheet since that would
change the style sheet's meaning.
</p>
<p>Third, backslash escapes allow authors to refer to characters
they can't easily put in a document. In this case, the backslash
is followed by at most six hexadecimal digits (0..9A..F), which
stand for the ISO 10646 (<a href="refs.html#ref-ISO10646" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="normref">[ISO10646]</span></a>)
character with that number, which must not be zero.
(It is undefined in CSS 2.1 what happens if a style sheet
<em>does</em> contain a zero.)
If a character in the range [0-9a-fA-F] follows the hexadecimal number,
the end of the number needs to be made clear. There are two ways
to do that:
</p>
<ol>
<li>with a space (or other whitespace character): "\26 B" ("&B").
In this case, user agents should treat a "CR/LF" pair
(U+000D/U+000A) as a single whitespace character.</li>
<li>by providing exactly 6 hexadecimal digits: "\000026B" ("&B")</li>
</ol>
<p>In fact, these two methods may be combined. Only one whitespace
character is ignored after a hexadecimal escape. Note that this means
that a "real" space after the escape sequence must itself either be
escaped or doubled.
</p>
</li>
<li>Backslash escapes are always considered to be part of an <a
href="#value-def-identifier">identifier</a> or a string (i.e.,
"\7B" is not punctuation, even though "{" is, and "\32" is allowed
at the start of a class name, even though "2" is not).
</li>
</ul>
<h3><a name="q7">4.1.4 Statements</a></h3>
<p> A CSS style sheet, for any version of CSS, consists of a list of
<a name="x5"><span class="index-inst" title="statements"><em>statements</em></span></a>
(see the grammar above). There are two kinds of statements: <a name="x6"><span
class="index-inst" title="at-rules"><em>at-rules</em></span></a>
and <a name="x7"><span class="index-inst" title="rule sets"><em>rule
sets.</em></span></a> There may be <a href="#whitespace">whitespace</a>
around the statements.
</p>
<p>In this specification, the expressions &
133E
quot;immediately before" or
"immediately after" mean with no intervening whitespace or comments.
</p>
<h3>4.1.5 <span class="index-def" title="at-rule">
<a name="at-rules">At-rules</a></span></h3>
<p> At-rules start with an <dfn>at-keyword</dfn>, an '@' character
followed immediately by an <a
href="#value-def-identifier">identifier</a> (for example, '@import',
'@page').
</p>
<p> An at-rule consists of everything up to and including the next
semicolon (;) or the next <a href="#block">block,</a> whichever comes
first.
</p>
<p>CSS 2.1 user agents must <span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x9"
href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> any <a
href="cascade.html#at-import">'@import'</a> rule that occurs inside a <a
href="#block">block</a> or after any valid rule other than an <a name="x10"><span
class="index-inst">@charset</span></a> or an @import rule.
</p>
<div class="illegal-example"><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P><p>
Assume, for example, that a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style sheet:
</p>
<pre><code>
@import "subs.css";
h1 { color: blue }
@import "list.css";
</code></pre>
<p> The second '@import' is illegal according to CSS2.1. The CSS 2.1 parser
<span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x11" href="#ignore">ignores</a></span>
the whole at-rule, effectively reducing the style sheet to:
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
@import "subs.css";
h1 { color: blue }
</code></pre>
</div>
<div class="illegal-example"><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P><p>
In the following example, the second '@import' rule is invalid,
since it occurs inside a '@media' <a href="#block">block</a>.
</p>
<pre><code>
@import "subs.css";
@media print {
@import "print-main.css";
body { font-size: 10pt }
}
h1 {color: blue }
</code></pre>
<p>Instead, to achieve the effect of only importing a style sheet
for 'print' media, use the @import with media syntax, e.g.:
</p>
<pre><code style="css">
@import "subs.css";
@import "print-main.css" print;
@media print {
body { font-size: 10pt }
}
h1 {color: blue }
</code></pre>
</div>
<h3>4.1.6 <a name="block">Blocks</a></h3>
<p> A <a name="x12"><span class="index-inst" title="block"><em>block</em></span></a>
starts with a left curly brace ({) and ends with the matching right
curly brace (}). In between there may be any characters, except that
parentheses (( )), brackets ([ ]) and braces ({ }) must
always occur in
matching pairs and may be nested. Single (') and double quotes (")
must also occur in matching pairs, and characters between them
are parsed as a <a name="x13"><span class="index-inst" title="string">string</span></a>.
See <a href="#tokenization">Tokenization</a> above for the definition
of a string.
</p>
<div class="illegal-example"><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P>
<p> Here is an example of a block. Note that the right brace between
the double quotes does not match the opening brace of the block, and that the
second single quote is an <a href="#escaped-characters">escaped
character</a>, and thus doesn't match the first single quote:
</p>
<pre><code>
{ causta: "}" + ({7} * '\'') }
</code></pre>
<p>Note that the above rule is not valid CSS 2.1, but it is still
a block as defined above.
</p>
</div>
<h3><a name="q10">4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors</a></h3>
<p> A rule set (also called "rule") consists of a selector followed by
a declaration block.
</p>
<p> A <a name="x14"><span class="index-def"
title="declaration-block"><dfn>declaration-block</dfn></span></a> (also
called a {}-block in the following text) starts with a left curly
brace ({) and ends with the matching right curly brace (}). In between
there must be a list of zero or more semicolon-separated (;)
declarations.
</p>
<p>The <a name="x15"><span class="index-def"
title="selector"><em>selector</em></span></a> (see also the section on <a
href="selector.html">selectors</a>) consists of everything up to (but
not including) the first left curly brace ({). A selector always goes
together with a {}-block. When a user agent can't parse the selector (i.e., it
is not valid CSS 2.1), it must <span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x16"
href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> the {}-block as well.
</p>
<p>CSS 2.1 gives a special meaning to the comma (,) in
selectors. However, since it is not known if the comma may acquire
other meanings in future versions of CSS, the whole statement should
be <span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x17"
href="#ignore">ignored</a></span> if there is an error anywhere in the
selector, even though the rest of the selector may look reasonable in
CSS 2.1.
</p>
<div class=illegal-example><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P>
<p>For example, since the "&" is not a valid token in a CSS 2.1
selector, a CSS 2.1 user agent must
<span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x18" href="#ignore">ignore</a></span>
the whole second line, and not set the color of H3 to red:
</p>
<pre><code>
h1, h2 {color: green }
h3, h4 & h5 {color: red }
h6 {color: black }
</code></pre>
</div>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P>
<p>Here is a more complex example. The first two pairs of curly braces
are inside a string, and do not mark the end of the selector. This is
a valid CSS 2.1 rule.
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
p[example="public class foo\
{\
private int x;\
\
foo(int x) {\
this.x = x;\
}\
\
}"] { color: red }
</code></pre>
</div>
<h3>4.1.8 <a name="declaration">Declarations</a> and <a
name="properties">properties</a></h3>
<p> A <a name="x19"><span class="index-def"
title="declaration"><dfn>declaration</dfn></span></a> is either empty or
consists of a <a name="x20"><span class="index-inst"
title="property">property</span></a>, followed by a colon (:), followed by
a value. Around each of these there may be <a
href="#whitespace">whitespace</a>.
</p>
<p>Because of the way selectors work, multiple declarations for the
same selector may be organized into semicolon (;) separated
groups.</p>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P><p>
Thus, the following rules:</p>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 { font-weight: bold }
h1 { font-size: 12px }
h1 { line-height: 14px }
h1 { font-family: Helvetica }
h1 { font-variant: normal }
h1 { font-style: normal }
</code></pre>
<p>are equivalent to:</p>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 {
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 14px;
font-family: Helvetica;
font-variant: normal;
font-style: normal
}
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>A property is an <a
href="#value-def-identifier">identifier</a>. Any character may occur
in the value. Parentheses ("( )"), brackets ("[ ]"),
braces ("{ }"), single
quotes (') and double quotes (") must come in matching
pairs, and semicolons not in strings must be <a
href="#escaped-characters">escaped</a>. Parentheses, brackets, and
braces may be nested. Inside the quotes, characters are parsed as a
string.
</p>
<p>The syntax of <a name="x21"><span class="index-def" title="value">values</span></a>
is specified separately for each property, but in any case, values are
built from identifiers, strings, numbers, lengths, percentages, URIs, and
colors.
</p>
<p>A user agent must <span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x22"
href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> a declaration with an invalid property
name or an invalid value. Every CSS 2.1 property has its own syntactic
and semantic restrictions on the values it accepts.
</p>
<div class="illegal-example"><P style="display:none">Illegal example(s):</P><p>
For example, assume a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style sheet:
</p>
<pre><code>
h1 { color: red; font-style: 12pt } /* Invalid value: 12pt */
p { color: blue; font-vendor: any; /* Invalid prop.: font-vendor */
font-variant: small-caps }
em em { font-style: normal }
</code></pre>
<p> The second declaration on the first line has an invalid value
'12pt'. The second declaration on the second line contains an
undefined property 'font-vendor'. The CSS 2.1 parser will <span
class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x23" href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> these
declarations, effectively reducing the style sheet to:
</p>
<pre class="example"><code class="css">
h1 { color: red; }
p { color: blue; font-variant: small-caps }
em em { font-style: normal }
</code></pre>
</div>
<h3>4.1.9 <a name="comments">Comments</a></h3>
<p><a name="x24"><span class="index-inst" title="comments">Comments </span></a> begin
with the characters "/*" and end with the characters "*/". They may
occur anywhere between tokens,
and their contents have no influence on the rendering. Comments may
not be nested.
</p>
<p>CSS also allows the SGML comment delimiters ("<!--" and
"-->") in certain places defined by the grammar, but they do not
delimit CSS
comments. They are permitted so that style rules appearing in an HTML
source document (in the STYLE element) may be hidden from pre-HTML 3.2
user agents. See the HTML 4.0 specification (<a href="refs.html#ref-HTML40" rel="biblioentry" class="noxref"><span class="informref">[HTML40]</span></a>) for more information.
</p>
<
133E
/div><h2>4.2 <a name="parsing-errors">Rules for handling parsing
errors</a></h2>
<p>In some cases, user agents must ignore part of an illegal style
sheet. This specification defines <span class="index-def"
title="ignore"><a name="ignore"><dfn>ignore</dfn></a></span> to mean
that the user agent parses the illegal part (in order to find its
beginning and end), but otherwise acts as if it had not been there.
CSS2.1 reserves for future versions of CSS all property:value combinations
and @-keywords that do not contain an identifier beginning with dash or
underscore. Implementations must ignore such combinations (other than those
introduced by future versions of CSS).
</p>
<p>To ensure that new properties and new values for existing
properties can be added in the future, user agents are required to
obey the following rules when they encounter the following
scenarios:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Unknown properties.</strong> User agents must <span
class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x26" href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> a <a
href="syndata.html#declaration">declaration</a> with an unknown
property. For example, if the style sheet is:
<pre class="illegal-example">
h1 { color: red; rotation: 70minutes }
</pre>
<p> the user agent will treat this as if the style sheet had been
</p>
<pre class="example"><code class="css">
h1 { color: red }
</code></pre>
</li>
<li id="illegalvalues"><strong>Illegal values.</strong> User agents must ignore a
declaration with an illegal value. For example:
<pre class="illegal-example"><code>
img { float: left } /* correct CSS 2.1 */
img { float: left here } /* "here" is not a value of 'float' */
img { background: "red" } /* keywords cannot be quoted */
img { border-width: 3 } /* a unit must be specified for length values */
</code></pre>
A CSS 2.1 parser would honor the first rule and
<span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x27" href="#ignore">ignore</a></span>
the rest, as if the style sheet had been:
<pre class="example"><code class="css">
img { float: left }
img { }
img { }
img { }
</code></pre>
<p>A user agent conforming to a future CSS specification may accept one or
more of the other rules as well.</p>
</li>
<li><strong>Malformed declarations.</strong> User agents must handle unexpected tokens encountered while parsing a declaration by reading until the end of the declaration, while observing the rules for matching pairs of (), [], {}, "", and '', and correctly handling escapes. For example, a malformed declaration may be missing a property, colon (:) or value. The following are all equivalent:
<pre class="example"><code>
p { color:green }
p { color:green; color } /* malformed declaration missing ':', value */
p { color:red; color; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */
p { color:green; color: } /* malformed declaration missing value */
p { color:red; color:; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */
p { color:green; color{;color:maroon} } /* unexpected tokens { } */
p { color:red; color{;color:maroon}; color:green } /* same with recovery */
</code></pre>
</li>
<li><strong>Invalid at-keywords.</strong> User agents must <span
class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x28" href="#ignore">ignore</a></span> an
invalid at-keyword together with everything following it, up to and
including the next semicolon (;) or block ({...}), whichever
comes first. For example, consider the following:
<pre class="illegal-example"><code>
@three-dee {
@background-lighting {
azimuth: 30deg;
elevation: 190deg;
}
h1 { color: red }
}
h1 { color: blue }
</code></pre>
<p> The '@three-dee' at-rule is not part of CSS 2.1. Therefore, the whole
at-rule (up to, and including, the third right curly brace) is <span
class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x29" href="#ignore">ignored.</a></span> A
CSS 2.1 user agent <span class="index-inst" title="ignore"><a name="x30"
href="#ignore">ignores</a></span> it, effectively reducing the style sheet
to:</p>
<pre class="example"><code class="css">
h1 { color: blue }
</code></pre>
<p>Something inside an at-rule that is ignored because it is invalid,
such as an invalid declaration within an @media-rule, does not make
the entire at-rule invalid.
</p>
</li>
<li><strong>Unexpected end of style sheet.</strong>
<p>
User agents must close all open constructs (for example: blocks, parentheses, brackets, rules, strings, and comments) at the end of the
stylesheet. For example:
</p>
<pre class="illegal-example"><code>
@media screen {
p:before { content: 'Hello
</code></pre>
<p>
would be treated the same as:
</p>
<pre class="example"><code class="css">
@media screen {
p:before { content: 'Hello'; }
}
</code></pre>
<p>
in a conformant UA.
</p>
</li>
<li><strong>Unexpected end of string.</strong>
<p>
User agents must close strings upon reaching the end of a line, but
then drop the construct (declaration or rule) in which the string
was found. For example:
</p>
<pre><code>
p {
color: green;
font-family: 'Courier New Times
color: red;
color: green;
}
</code></pre>
<p>
...would be treated the same as:
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
p { color: green; color: green; }
</code></pre>
<p>
...because the second declaration (from 'font-family' to the
semicolon after 'color: red') is invalid and is dropped.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>4.3 <a name="values">Values</a></h2>
<h3><a name="q15">4.3.1 Integers and real numbers</a></h3>
<p>Some value types may have integer values (denoted by <span
class="index-def" title="<integer>::definition of"><a
name="value-def-integer" class="value-def"><integer></a></span>)
or real number values (denoted by <span class="index-def"
title="<number>::definition of"><a name="value-def-number"
class="value-def"><number></a></span>). Real numbers and
integers are specified in decimal notation only. An <integer>
consists of one or more digits "0" to "9". A <number> can either
be an <integer>, or it can be zero or more digits followed by a
dot (.) followed by one or more digits. Both integers and real numbers
may be preceded by a "-" or "+" to indicate the sign.
</p>
<p>Note that many properties that allow an integer or real number as a
value actually restrict the value to some range, often to a
non-negative value.
</p>
<h3>4.3.2 <a name="length-units">Lengths</a></h3>
<p>Lengths refer to horizontal or vertical measurements.</p>
<p> The format of a length value (denoted by <span class="index-def"
title="<length>::definition of"><a name="value-def-length"
class="value-def"><length></a></span> in this specification) is
a <a href="syndata.html#value-def-number" class="noxref"><span
class="value-inst-number"><number></span></a> (with or without a
decimal point) immediately followed by a unit identifier (e.g., px,
em, etc.). After a zero length, the unit identifier is optional.
</p>
<p> Some properties allow negative length values, but this may
complicate the formatting model and there may be
implementation-specific limits. If a negative length value cannot be
supported, it should be converted to the nearest value that can be
supported.
</p>
<p>If a negative length value is set on a property that does not allow
negative length values, the declaration is ignored.
</p>
<p><a name="absrel-units">There are two types of length units:
relative and absolute.</a> <a name="x34"><span class="index-def" title="relative
units"><em>Relative length</em></span></a> units specify a length relative
to another length property. Style sheets that use relative units will
more easily scale from one medium to another (e.g., from a computer
display to a laser printer).
</p>
<p>Relative units are:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>em</strong>: the <a href="fonts.html#propdef-font-size" class="noxref"><span class="propinst-font-size">'font-size'</span></a> of the relevant font</li>
<li><strong>ex</strong>: the <span class="descinst">'x-height'</span> of the relevant font</li>
<li><strong>px</strong>: pixels, relative to the viewing device</li>
</ul>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 { margin: 0.5em } /* em */
h1 { margin: 1ex } /* ex */
p { font-size: 12px } /* px */
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>The <span class="index-def" title="em (unit)|quad width"><a
name="em-width">'em'</a></span> unit is equal to the computed value of
the <a href="fonts.html#propdef-font-size" class="noxref"><span class="propinst-font-size">'font-size'</span></a> property of
the element on which it is used. The exception is when 'em' occurs in
the value of the 'font-size' property itself, in which case it refers
to the font size of the parent element. It may be used for vertical or
horizontal measurement. (This unit is also sometimes called the
quad-width in typographic texts.)
</p>
<p>The <span class="index-def" title="x-height|ex (unit)"><a
name="ex">'ex'</a></span> unit is defined by the font's <span
class="descinst-x-height">'x-height'</span>. The x-height is so called
because it is often equal to the height of the lowercase "x". However,
an 'ex' is defined even for fonts that don't contain an "x".
</p>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P>
<p>The rule:
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 { line-height: 1.2em }
</code></pre>
<p>means that the line height of "h1" elements will be 20% greater
than the font size of the "h1" elements. On the other hand:
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 { font-size: 1.2em }
</code></pre>
<p>means that the font-size of "h1" elements will be 20% greater than
the font size inherited by "h1" elements.</p>
</div>
<p>When specified for the root of the <a href="conform.html#doctree">
document tree</a> (e.g., "HTML" in HTML), 'em' and 'ex' refer to
the property's <a href="about.html#initial-value">initial value</a>.
</p>
<p><a name="pixel-units">Pixel units</a> are relative to the
resolution of the viewing device, i.e., most often a computer
display. If the pixel density of the output device is very different
from that of a typical computer display, the user agent should rescale
pixel values. It is recommended that the <a name="x39"><span class="index-def"
title="reference pixel|pixel"><em>reference pixel</em></span></a> be the
visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 96dpi
and a distance from the reader of an arm's length. For a nominal arm's
length of 28 inches, the visual angle is therefore about 0.0213
degrees.
</p>
<p>For reading at arm's length, 1px thus corresponds to about 0.26 mm
(1/96 inch). When printed on a laser printer, meant for reading at a
little less than arm's length (55 cm, 21 inches), 1px is about
0.20 mm. On a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) printer, that may be
rounded up to 3 dots (0.25 mm); on a 600 dpi printer, it can
be rounded to 5 dots.
</p>
<p>The two images below illustrate the effect of viewing distance on
the size of a pixel and the effect of a device's resolution. In the
first image, a reading distance of 71 cm (28 inch) results
in a px of 0.26 mm, while a reading distance of 3.5 m
(12 feet) requires a px of 1.3 mm.
</p>
<div class="figure">
<p><img src="images/pixel1.png" alt="Showing that pixels must become
larger if the viewing distance increases"><SPAN class="dlink"> <A name="img-pixel1" href="images/longdesc/pixel1-desc.html" title="Long description for the illustration of a pixel's definition">[D]</A></SPAN> </p>
</div>
<p>In the second image, an
area of 1px by 1px is covered by a single dot in a low-resolution
device (a computer screen), while the same area is covered by 16 dots
in a higher resolution device (such as a 400 dpi laser printer).
</p>
<div class="figure">
<p><img
src="images/pixel2.png" alt="Showing that more device pixels (dots)
are needed to cover a 1px by 1px area on a high-resolution device than
on a low-res one"><SPAN class="dlink"> <A name="img-pixel2" href="images/longdesc/pixel2-desc.html" title="Long description for the illustration of reference
vs. device pixel">[D]</A></SPAN></p>
</div>
<p>Child elements do not inherit the relative values specified for
their parent; they inherit the <a
href="cascade.html#computed-value">computed values</a>.</p>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P><p>
In the following rules, the computed <a href="text.html#propdef-text-indent" class="noxref"><span
class="propinst-text-indent">'text-indent'</span></a> value of "h1" elements
will be 36px, not 45px, if "h1" is a child of the "body" element.
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
body {
font-size: 12px;
text-indent: 3em; /* i.e., 36px */
}
h1 { font-size: 15px }
</code></pre>
</div>
<p><a name="x41"><span class="index-def" title="absolute length"><em> Absolute
length</em></span></a> units are only useful when the physical properties
of the output medium are known. The absolute units are:
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>in</strong>: inches — 1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters.</li>
<li><strong>cm</strong>: centimeters</li>
<li><strong>mm</strong>: millimeters</li>
<li><strong>pt</strong>: points — the points used by CSS 2.1 are equal to 1/72nd of an inch. </li>
<li><strong>pc</strong>: picas — 1 pica is equal to 12 points.</li>
</ul>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P>
<pre><code class="css">
h1 { margin: 0.5in } /* inches */
h2 { line-height: 3cm } /* centimeters */
h3 { word-spacing: 4mm } /* millimeters */
h4 { font-size: 12pt } /* points */
h4 { font-size: 1pc } /* picas */
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>In cases where the <a href="cascade.html#usedValue">used</a> length cannot be supported, user agents must approximate it in the <a
href="cascade.html#actual-value">actual value.</a>
</p>
<h3>4.3.3 <a name="percentage-units">Percentages</a></h3>
<p> The format of a percentage value (denoted by <span
class="index-def" title="<percentage>::definition of"><a
name="value-def-percentage"
class="value-def"><percentage></a></span> in this specification)
is a <span class="index-inst"
title="<number>"><a name="x43" href="syndata.html#value-def-number" class="noxref"><span
class="value-inst-number"><number></span></a></span> immediately
followed by '%'.
</p>
<p> Percentage values are always relative to another value, for
example a length. Each property that allows percentages also defines
the value to which the percentage refers. The value may be that of
another property for the same element, a property for an ancestor
element, or a value of the formatting context (e.g., the width of a <a
href="visuren.html#containing-block">containing block</a>). When a
percentage value is set for a property of the <a
href="conform.html#root">root</a> element and the percentage is
defined as referring to the inherited value of some property, the
resultant value is the percentage times the <a
href="about.html#initial-value">initial value</a> of that property.
</p>
<div class="example"><P style="display:none">Example(s):</P><p>
Since child elements (generally) inherit the <a
href="cascade.html#computed-value">computed values</a> of their parent, in
the following example, the children of the P element will inherit a
value of 12px for <a href="visudet.html#propdef-line-height" class="noxref"><span
class="propinst-line-height">'line-height'</span></a>, not the percentage
value (120%):
</p>
<pre><code class="css">
p { font-size: 10px }
p { line-height: 120% } /* 120% of 'font-size' */
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