Re: [CSSWG] action 38, CSS Variables

Bert Bos wrote:
> 
> Daniel Glazman wrote:
> 
>>   http://disruptive-innovations.com/zoo/cssvariables/
> 
> Here are a few principles I hold dear:
> 
> The smaller CSS is, the better. A smaller CSS is easier to learn, easier 
> to implement and has a better chance of being interoperable.
> 
> If some feature can be done outside of CSS, especially a feature that is 
> useful for other technologies than CSS, then is it should be done 
> outside of CSS. Modularity avoids implementing things twice, allows 
> parallel developments and re-use.

I think that this @const/@vars feature is exactly what is needed to
support modularity on CSS level.

I suspect that even relatively simple system of styles used on w3c.org 
will benefit if @const/@vars would be supported widely.

> 
> Indirection is bad, because too few people understand it. Half the 
> people don't understand that EM refers to a style rule in a different 
> file and that that style rule makes the text italic. Every further 
> indirection we add halves our audience.
> 

Beg my pardon but cascading in CSS is indirection too.
And I would not tell for sure what is harder to comprehend: cascading
or symbolic names for entities.

> 
> Variables in CSS are wrong for the above three reasons. They make the 
> language bigger and more difficult to learn, they make other people's 
> style sheets more difficult to understand and re-use. They can instead 
> be done with a generic macro processor and would then be useful for 
> other languages, too (HTML, SVG, Javascript, Atom, etc.). They introduce 
> extra indirections.

I would like to see that macro processor that I can use on my
site running WordPress, BBPress, DokuWiki and my own PHPisms.
Problem is not in macro processing but in CSS itself -
multiple modules cannot be glued together because CSS simply does not 
provide such a glue.

> 
> Computer scientists love indirections, they believe all problems can be 
> solved with them, but normal people hate them. Programmers program their 
> video recorders, normal people prefer to press the Record button at the 
> right moment. Programmers use text editors, normal people use Direct 
> Manipulation interfaces (what's often incorrectly referred to as WYSIWYG).
> 

Sorry but how "normal people" and CSS design are related?

-- 
Andrew Fedoniouk.

http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2008 06:54:25 UTC