Re: alternate font properties

Hakon Lie wrote:
> The 'font' property is a "shorthand" property to save keystrokes and
> bandwidth. It's pure syntactic sugar; in CSS1, a rule involving a
> shorthand property can always be rewritten using using the individual
> properties. If we make the proposed change, this will no longer be
the
> case.

Yes, this is sort of shorthand for cascading shorthands.
 
> One may argue that 'font-size' (and the other propeties that 'font'
is
> a shorthand for) should be extended to take a comma-separated list of
> values as well. This could potentially be done in whatever comes
after
> CSS1, but the result would not necessarily look pretty:
> 
>   font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
>   font-size: 10pt, 11pt, 11pt;
> 
> Correlating the various values in the lists is a messy job.

I would not argue to create such confusion. Correlation is not at all
apparent, as it is with the enhanced font property.
 
> Another solution would be to make 'font' into something other than
> just a shorthand property. But overwhelming evidence will need to be
> presented..

Send in the sleuths. An innocent concept is on trial. :-)

The only evidence at the moment is that two authors confronted with the
same problem found the same solution intuitive. I see your point
regarding the shorthand concept, but my feeling is that if the
functionality can be grown without any ill effects, there's no good
reason for not changing the conceptual construction of the property.
You could define it as a new property 'font-list', but why? It would be
conceptually different but functionally redundant.

> The better solution is probably to look at what [1] can offer..
> 
> [1] http://www12.w3.org/TR/WD-font

I haven't been able to digest this yet. Obviously a lot of thought went
into it and a lot of thought should be given. I'm all for vastly
improved control of fonts on the web, but that doesn't negate the
appeal of Todd's and my suggestion: a conceptual change that adds an
intuitive bit of functionality at no practical cost.

David Perrell

Received on Tuesday, 29 July 1997 18:19:40 UTC