Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-syntax][css-values] Add IEEE 754 float hex format SVG/CSS values (#4564)

To keep the discussion in one place, here's [my reply](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2019Dec/0004.html) from when this request was [originally posted to the www-svg mailing list](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2019Dec/0003.html).

Key points (beyond suggesting filing it here):

> I can see a few obstacles:
> 
> - SVG currently only [requires single-precision floats](https://svgwg.org/svg2-draft/types.html#Precision), not double.  CSS doesn't currently specify precision requirements; there is an open issue suggesting that it should be formally made undefined behavior (#4552). 
> - <del>The `#nnnnnnnn` format is already used in CSS and SVG for colors. Parsing would be ambiguous in some CSS properties.</del> *[Edit: this issue is addressed by using an 0x syntax]*
> - CSS (and SVG) are mostly harmonizing with JavaScript (ECMAScript) for any new Math-related features, and JavaScript doesn't have any hex-based formats for floats. *[Edit: the 0x syntax is a problem from this perspective, since in JavaScript it is always interpreted as an integer, not a float!]*
> 
> You might get more support for a request to specify the parsing/rounding rules for converting between decimal representation and binary floats (which would most likely match the [ECMAScript specification](https://tc39.es/ecma262/#number-value), and use the "round to nearest, with ties to even" rule). With this guaranteed, you could be confident that a decimal version of a number would always parse into the same binary representation. But first, the precision level (single or double float) would need to be defined.


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Received on Thursday, 5 December 2019 22:59:22 UTC