Perhaps so does yours. It isn't clear whether the CSS for .red-text would have to over-ride the default behaviour whereby an inline element like <span> is rendered by stacking it to the left or right (depending on text directionality) of the previous inline element or text node, or if the accent should go over the e by default.
Well, I would put it like this. Consider the following:
(1) <span class="black-text">{U+00E9}</span>
(2) <span class="black-text">e{U+0301}</span>
(3) <span class="black-text">e<span class="black-text">{U+0301}</span></span>
(4) <span class="black-text">e<span class="red-text">{U+0301}</span></span>
I would expect (1), (2) and (3) to be rendered identically, and (4) to differ only in the colour of the accent, just as it would be (apart from (1) if U+0301 were replaced by a regular letter. I am assuming nothing special defined in the CSS - the behaviour should be the same with a simple colour attribute. And so I would expect the behaviour of an in-line span element to be subtly different from its normal behaviour when the text starts with a combining mark. I think this is what any naive user would expect in the circumstances, and is also what is sensible.
Briefly testing on a Win2000 box I found that IE6 ignored the styling on the accent, Mozilla1.4 didn't show the accent, and Opera7.2 displayed the red accent (tests had the same results with ́ as with the combining character used directly). It isn't clear to me which, if any, of these are examples of conformant behaviour.Looking at existing implementations is a very bad guide to what behaviour is actually conformant, sensible, or expected by users. We have four independent variables here!
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
