Some interesting reading from the IE 7.0 threads I had posted.
Let's clarify a couple of things. the W3C is not a standards body At least not in the binding platforms of ISO etc.
The do write Specs. (a lot of times conflicting within the same spec, or between groups within the same body) But the W3C is in the same regards as IETF possibly the Unicode consortium (although a ISO writtten standards have a Unicode back spec not all unicode consrtium specs have an ISO standard)
So in this light. it was pointed out that CSS 2.1 is CSS 2.0 revision 1. which is CSS 2.0. I will take a point to disagree with that statemetn in a moment. The interesting thing was that In 1998 there was no Recommended status on the platform.
Ok on the the disagreemement On Why 2.1 is not 2.0 Semantically the Spec was changed and certain parts were dropped in areas that were not heavily used. or never were implemented in real life (IOW there are times when standards written on Paper make no sense to implemented in the browser)
And this is where compliancy becomes an Issue.
While 2.1 is a minor update it does break some issues. just choosing one secttion
The 'marker' value for 'display' does not exist in CSS 2.1
The '<uri>' value is dropped.
The 'size', 'marks' and 'page' properties are not in CSS 2.1.
The 'font-stretch' and 'font-size-adjust' properties don't exist in CSS 2.1.
Font descriptors and the '@font-face' declaration don't exist in CSS 2.1.
The 'text-shadow' property is not in CSS 2.1.
These were parts that were part of the css 2.0 spec and are removed in css 2.1.
I do believe that those parts moved to the CSS 3 specs but am not absolutly sure on that part.
Not being part of the full history of the specs. I do believe when the alignment to 2.1 occured with the SVG group which btw is DOING much more work these days then HTML has been doing.
Granted I align with the group to replace CSS with XSL-fo but that is another battle.
Douglas