Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-conditional-4] Rename @when to @if (#6684)

Hand-edited minutes from today’s call, since the bot crashed

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fantasai Topic: @when vs @if
fantasai lea: We all know that we have at-rule to unify all our conditionals: @media, @supports, new things
fantasai lea: Right now called @when, only because @if conflicts with SASS
fantasai lea: I don't think that's sufficient reason to go against the convention of almost all computer languages
fantasai lea: Almost everything uses "if"
fantasai lea: We are going against any precedent that CSS authors are likely to be familiar with
fantasai lea: Even spreadsheets use IF
fantasai lea: Whereas @when would need to be used specifically for CSS, and it seems really weird
fantasai lea: 10 years down the line will be a weirdness in CSS
fantasai lea: and we might not even remember that SASS was using it
fantasai lea: There are ways for SASS to get around it
fantasai lea: Not the same as when conflicts with libraries that are actively running on websites
fantasai lea: e.g. when TC39 decided on a different name with protoptye
fantasai lea: but SASS is a preprocessor. It's much easier to migrate syntax when preprocessing before website is deployed
fantasai lea: when you run website using SASS< you're not running SASS, you're running the generated CSS
fantasai lea: The only conflict is when SASS itself runs
fantasai lea: easier to get around
fantasai lea: I don't think we should do something that decreases usability for the core language, for millions of CSS authors, because of this 3rd party tool that uses @if
fantasai lea: If it was the same usability, then why not be nice and use @when
fantasai lea: but I think it's significantly less usable to use @when, and I don't think the tradeoff is worth it
TabAtkins q+
Rossen_ +1
bmathwig +1
fantasai TabAtkins: I very strongly disagree with the argument Lea just made here.
tantek +1 Lea
fantasai TabAtkins: In general, I don't.
bradk +1 Lea
fantasai TabAtkins: Generally CSS should make the best decision for its future, and everything else is secondary
fantasai TabAtkins: that said, it's not absolute
fantasai TabAtkins: we do sometimes make decisions based on the impact on the ecosystem
fantasai TabAtkins: authors are more important than purity
fantasai TabAtkins: we have to consider how bad it is for authors generally, vs authors using the tool
chris +1 Lea (and +1 the original resolution, which specified @if)
fantasai TabAtkins: we made that decision e.g. in grid line names, switching from parens to square brackets
fantasai TabAtkins: here the impact on SASS far oughtweighs the impact on future CSS authors
lea all of you plus-one-ing maybe could also q-plus yourselves and speak up? :)
fantasai TabAtkins: I've talked with Natalie ??? main develper of SASS
bkardell_ fwiw i do not feel that it is worse. If we took sass off the table entirely I'm not sure I have very strong feels on if/when - both feel very learnable and not quite exactly comparable to other things
fantasai TabAtkins: her thought is that if CSS adopts @if with different semantics than SASS's @if, would be a major problem
lea q+
fantasai TabAtkins: have problems upgrading SASS for much more minor issue sthan this
fantasai TabAtkins: If 'if' was the only reasonable name, different case.
fantasai TabAtkins: but "when" is used in various places, e.g. the new JS proposal (use of when predates me)
miriam q+
fantasai TabAtkins: used in Ruby and common LISP as variant on "if"
fantasai TabAtkins: iT's easy enough to understand, perfectly serviceable word, makes sense in English
dbaron s/Natalie ???/Natalie Weizenbaum/
fantasai TabAtkins: so harm to significant section of authors using SASS right now
fantasai TabAtkins: vastly outweighs harm to future by using if
fantasai TabAtkins: I would formally object to using @if
fantasai TabAtkins: this would be extraordinarily bad
iank_ Is it possible to get Natalie on the call?
Rossen_ TabAtkins, there's nothing wrong going down the FO path for this
fantasai lea: CSS has an extension mechanism, prefixes, and any software that wants to extend the language can use prefixes
Rossen_ q?
fantasai lea: SASS didn't do that. They could have done @-if or things
fantasai lea: How far are we going to go to avoid clashing with SASS? if we add loops do we avoid using "for"?
fantasai lea: I disagree strongly that "if" and "when" are roughly equivalent in suability
tantek +1 Lea
fantasai lea: even if they were equivalent in English
bradk Isn’t sass @if different in that it doesn’t normally have the parentheses that we would require?
fantasai lea: "if" has much stronger consistency
fantasai lea: Also in English, when implies something is time-based, whereas 'if' does not
fantasai lea: many people in the thread, including native and non-native speakers
tantek +1 very much sold that "when" also implies time-semantic which is inappropriate here.
fantasai lea: expressed [confusion?]
fantasai lea: We have accommodated SASS in the past, but in cases where both options have equal usability
chris PostCSS also has @if (and also @else!) https://www.npmjs.com/package/postcss-conditionals
fantasai lea: I'm not sure how widely-used SASS is at this point anyway, community seems to be shifting to PostCSS
chris q+
fantasai lea: I'm not going to make threats about objections, but I also feel very strongly about this
fantasai query tantek 
fantasai miriam: Want to re-iterate Tab's suggestion that this would be pretty devastating to SASS if we made this change
fantasai miriam: and SASS is one of the larguest, most used tools in CSS
fantasai miriam: just went through adding "flashes", which was a massive hit
fantasai miriam: I can't claim to be unbiased, part of the SASS team
fantasai miriam: but I think causing that much disruption to such a widely-used tool isn't worth the few characters
fantasai miriam: I hope we can avoid doing that much damage
lea +1 Rossen_
fantasai chris: SASS also has @else. Are we going to rename @else to @elif or @elsewhen or something else?
chris s/SASS/PostCSS
fantasai astearns: Out of time, Tab can you ask Natalie to comment?
fantasai astearns: scope of the damage has been assigned adjectives, but it would be nice to go through the details of what SASS would do if we chose @if
dbaron If we can't agree on English terms to use... at what point do we start using terms from other languages?
tantek I have a problem with object to allowing the design of CSS to be hamstrung or "made weird" by any legacy frameworks decisions, especially by frameworks that are pre-processing only and are thus not aprt of any archived content on the web</pre>
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Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2022 19:30:29 UTC