Re: [css-cascade-4][css3-ui] naming collision: the "default" value

> On 22 Apr 2015, at 23:04, Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Tab,
> 
> Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 9:21:31 PM, you wrote:
> 
>> 1. reset (already suggested by you, just putting it here for organization)
>> 2. ua-default (suggested by zcorpan)
>> 3. user-agent
> 
>> I like ua-default.  It's even clearer than "default", and makes it
>> really obvious to people what it does.  It also seems to be
>> practically guaranteed to not already be used by authors in any
>> <custom-ident>s we have.  Its only downside is that it's not
>> technically correct - when used in an author-level sheet, it causes
>> the user stylesheet to be applied too - but I don't think that's a
>> complication that matters.
> 
> For that reason I prefer reset. Because the prose can explain what
> exactly you reset to.

I like being technically correct, but I think I like 2 as well in this case.

From an author perspective, there isn't a meaningful difference between
UA stylesheet and author stylesheet. It's just the styles that are there
before you apply yours.

The only scenario where it makes a difference is if an author thinks along
these lines:

"I don't know if the user stylesheet has set a font-size, but if it did,
I'm going to undo that and reset the value of font-size to the UA
stylesheet default, even though I don't know what that is either. 16px
or whatever the UA default is is fine, but how dare users customize things?"

If an author thinks like this, then yes, they'll be confused by the naming.
But first, I don't believe people like this exist, and if they do, they
deserve the pain.

Also, I like keeping the word default (even prefixed with something), because
it let's up establish "default value" as terminology for the value you'd
get if you hadn't your level of the cascade.

This is arguably how people speak already. E.g.:
  "The default value of 'display' on divs is 'block', so if you
  want something else you need to override it"

"reset value" doesn't nearly as good in the same sentence.

Alternatively, it's a bit more verbose, but we could call it "default-value".

Keeps the word default, it's not misleading anyone (even bad people),
and it's very unlikely to collide with real-life <custom-idents>.

 - Florian

Received on Wednesday, 22 April 2015 21:26:32 UTC