Re: [css3-flexbox] Best way to denote flexible lengths

On Apr 14, 2011, at 9:46 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> Elsewhere I believe the order is not important if it is not ambiguous. Since we have to numbers they have to be in order - positive flex then negative flex if we want reasonable default.
>> 
>> Having good defaults is key here (just as it is with 'background' property)
>> 
>>        flex(1)         means (preferred=auto, positive-flex=1, negative-flex=0)
>>        flex(auto)      means (preferred=auto, positive-flex=1, negative-flex=0)
>>        flex(0)         means (preferred=auto, no flexibility)
> 
> Yes to all of these.
> 
> 
>> if this is really the way to go, it should probably accept unitless zero length at certain priority (first or last... I think last)
> 
> Last, I guess.  That is, a '0' is only taken to be a length if there
> are three arguments and they're all numbers.  In every other
> combination, numbers are flex specifiers.
> 
> Alternately, if this seems a little ambiguous, we can just make flex()
> take 'fr' units for its flex specifiers.  It's then unambiguous what
> "flex(0 1fr)" means - it has a preferred size of 0 and a pos-flex of
> 1.

If you'll forgive a little tangent here, I find the "f" hard to distinguish in most common fonts at authoring size. It looks a lot like an "l" (which itself looks like a "|" and a "1"). So, I dislike "fl" because it looks like little more than fence posts. But "fr" seems strange too. If that means "Fractional Units", then we should, in theory, call the module "Fraction Box" (I'm just sayin'; it doesn't match up). Since it is really flex units we are talking about, I say we go ahead and call them FU's.

What? It means what we say it means.

Received on Thursday, 14 April 2011 17:26:03 UTC