Re: [Css Variables] Variable Declaration Blocks

On Sep 25, 2008, at 3:10 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:

>
> On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:12:22 +0200, Mike Wilson  
> <mikewse@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> fantasai wrote:
>>> This was as far as I got Friday afternoon at the F2F:
>>>   http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/specs/constants/
>>>
>>> It's not very complete, but I think it captures the important points
>>> in the discussion.
>>
>> The discussion in the meeting notes
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Sep/0075.html
>> was kind of brief regarding some of the technical problems with the
>> original CSS Vars suggestion.
>
> Well, the CSSOM problem is significant.


What problem?

You can relax the one-value-per-property-per-declaration-block rule  
when dealing with variable declaration blocks.  That's what I did at  
any rate.  It works just fine.  At the call sites everything remains  
unresolved as far as the back end CSS OM is concerned, so there's no  
problem there.  If you do want to expose the call site of a variable  
declaration block to the CSS OM, then it could be done with a  
synthetic property (although at that point you do have to relax the  
one-value-per-property rule to see where all the insertion points  
might be).  I think it would be reasonable to not expose those  
insertion points, though, if it would be considered troublesome to do  
so.

As for the variable declaration blocks themselves, they are currently  
only obtainable as strings in the CSS OM anyway, so there's no issue  
with the fact that those are (secretly) storing more than one value  
per property unless you want to expose them as declarations.  Even if  
they were exposed, though, it's not difficult to envision how the CSS  
OM for them might work.

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

Received on Thursday, 25 September 2008 08:22:27 UTC