most likely in ../rsc/css/basic.css and the other files in there.

What do you need it for ? You can freely overwrite them in your skin's css file

Because every time I try to track back the css which overrides what I include 'below' it, I end up having to deal with the css for that. The manual override for individual free_html simply does not work, at least in my experience. I can override the free_html css with some effort, by going to the sidebar_inc file, but I keep asking myself why I have to do this.

It is not in basic.css. I have done a search on every css file in the rsc directory, and it ain't in any of them. I just don't seem to be able to override it.

If you give an example of what you are trying to achieve, and provide an url, we can help you better..

However typically, you should be easily override any css values defined in core, as core css files are loaded before your skin's css..You might be experiencing hierarchical mistake such as ;

span#myspan {color:...}

overrides;

#myspan {color:...}

etc.

or it might be a simple, typo i dont know..but normally you shouldnt have to go anywhere near those files to overwrite default values.

Here is an illustration of what I mean: I have commented out the lines

'block_start' => '<li class="$wi_class$">',
'block_end' => '</li>',

from _sidebar_right_inc.php (dark-contrast skin)

assuming that each widget dropped into the sidebar would then not be given the status of a list item. Yet here is the id/class information revealed by Firefox:

http://www.issgenova.com/illustrate.html

some parameters are assigned default values.. instead of commenting out, try leaving it empty

'block_start' => '',
'block_end' => '',