> HTML is not the escape hatch out of CSS If anything, CSS is kind of an escape hatch out of HTML/SGML attributes which were specifically introduced for attach

> HTML is not the escape hatch out of CSS If anything, CSS is kind of an escape hatch out of HTML/SGML attributes which were specifically introduced for attaching any meaningful info to text nodes not displayed as such to the reader. This is especially evident if you compare the enormous amount of extensions and added non-type-checked ad-hoc syntax to CSS with the relative lack of HTML evolution. The only reason appears to be that HTML was organisationally locked in a W3C process for such a long time, while CSS could be easily extended. Attributes are used for rendering details all the time with the original concept of markup. The idea that you need a special syntax and separate item-value space that's neither here nor there, like CSS is, when organising item-value assignments is the entire point of attributes and even hard-code a vague structure/presentation dichotomy that's then up for interpretation for like 30 years is beyond absurd. SGML, from before 1986, can already assign attributes (so called link attributes) based on context-dependent rules much like CSS.