Re: Objectives?

On Tue, 2022-11-01 at 07:53 +0900, Florian Rivoal wrote:
> 
> Writing some amount of specs ahead of implementations to show the way
> forward is a good thing. But writing too much when implementations
> aren’t following is likely to turn from anticipation sci-fi into
> outright fantasy :)

At the moment the commercial implementations are ahead of the specs in
in some areas, and i think are likely to implement in others if it's
not too expensive. E.g. i'd been working on a spec for collapsing page-
ranges in an index when i left, and if that's written clearly and
works, and doesn't break the current implementations, it'd have a good
chance. On the other hand, new kinds of floats would be a harder sell
:)

> 
> One way or another, we have to make enough people care.
> 
> Possibly, Dave’s suggestion of an equivalent of the css zen garden
> for print may be a good tool in that direction.
+1

> 
> Sometimes, I think if we can just “trick” browser into implementing
> just enough about fragmentation that people start using it on the
> web, that’ll open the floodgates of requests for more fragmentation
> related features. I have a could of Trojan horses I keep dreaming
> about to get there, one of which is to get multicol to be able to
> fragment into multiple rows of columns when overflowing, so that it’s
> finally usable on screen for non trivial cases. 

That would be nice.

> But that’s another exercise in spec writing ahead of implementor
> interest, and while as a spec writer that’s tempting, I am not sure
> that’s actually effective.

It'd need a polyfill or some other proof of concept probably, and then
it might be an easy sell.

> 
> 
> > > Getting W3C to accept non-browser implementations has proved
> > > problematic in the past, and is one reason why some of the work
> > > has
> > > stalled.
> 
> I am not sure that is true in the case of the CSS-WG.

I'm not sure i can comment further :)

>  While print implementations aren’t the main focus of interest, we do
> try to remember them when relevant, and I don’t believe that there’s
> been push back against getting a CSS spec to REC because the only
> thing we were missing was implementations, while a non-browser
> implementation was around.

I know of cases.
> 
> (I think the number of css-wg members who are personally interested
> in print and fragmentation exceeds what you’d think based on who
> their employers are,

for sure

>  that does give some air time to print/fragmentation related issue.
> But there’s a limit to what can be done without more active
> engagement).
> 
> —Florian

best,

liam


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Received on Tuesday, 1 November 2022 00:07:52 UTC