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

> On Apr 22, 2015, at 2:26 PM, Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 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

'ua-default' seems too jargony to me. I suspect there is a huge percentage of authors writing CSS that don't know what 'ua' stands for, or even what a "user agent" is.

Received on Thursday, 23 April 2015 02:24:09 UTC