Re: Supporting propriety "Extensions"

Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> I agree that the ascii hyphen/minus usage is a problem. Sure, 
> workarounds exist but I hope I don't need to use CSS values like
> margin: -1 * -vendor-func(-1 * -vendor-special-value);
> in the future. The "-1 * " is the hack I would need to use because the 
> ascii hyphen/minus is already taken by function or special value vendor 
> prefix so I need to negate the value through multiplication.

Although I'm not sure if your assumption is correct you should never use 
vendor extensions.


> The future problem still exists and I would support using _vnd_ as 
> verdor extension prefix instead of -vnd-. And already works for units 
> too: an UA should ignore value like "2.52_foo_xunit" if it doesn't 
> support unit "xunit" designed by vendor "foo".

Why instead? Both are allowed per current specification and -foo- is 
already widely deployed for properties and values. (Also for 
pseudo-classes, pseudo-elements and at-rules.)


>> 1) If company AAA wants to experiment with
>> attribute 'cool-feature' internally then it may assign any
>> name it wants to it. If company wants to publish 'cool-feature'
>> then it should pass W3C approval. Dot.
>
> Okay, company "foo" experiments with attribute called "margin" (imagine 
> that it weren't in wide usage yet) and it's later found out that the 
> design was narrow-minded. W3C cannot use property called "margin" for 
> *anything* because the usage could collide with real world usage of 
> *broken* design of such property.

You said it was not in wide use yet and that only the company 
experimented with it. Also, I think that the person who wrote about 
company AAA meant something else. Namely that that company AAA will 
prefix 'cool-feature' and later submit it to the CSS WG so they can drop 
the prefix once they match the definition the CSS WG bounds to that 
property.


> CSS is a technology published by W3C 
> and I think that vendors should allow W3C to design the namespace. 
> Vendor prefix is required to reserve usable property names for the future.
> 
> For example, "expression()" cannot never be used for anything but the 
> MSIE version of the property.

When IE created that value (it is not a property) there was no such 
mechanism available. New MS products do use prefixes.


> And then page authors use that feature in not-too-intelligent way... And 
> what do you know? A new UA vendor comes up and decides to *fake* it's 
> "public_ua_name" so that existing content works better. (Compare to UA 
> string used so often in JS scripts. Nearly all user agent strings start 
> with "Mozilla " today!)

Why do you think there will be so much vendor extensions? That would 
mean the CSS WG is doing a bad job.


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2005 10:12:01 UTC