Re: [css-priorities] Updated document on CSS priorities

Any cosmetic changes that require you to ADD elements (mainly visual) to
the page will have negative effects when polyfilled - hyphens is a
wonderful example.  Only at the browser level can you add something that
isn't really there - so basically have a visual display that gets ignored
by other aspects of the rendering system (allowing for things like
accessibility to happen).

The biggest struggle between what can/should be polyfilled from my
perspective is this - a polyfill in nearly all cases will be a kludge or
coat-of-paint over something that doesn't work as intended.  Javascript
sits at a higher level than the browser, so implementations will be
slower.  Additionally, data provided to it will be different.

Clearly my knowledge of Houdini is not high, but it sounds like Houdini is
working to make some higher quality data be provided to polyfills to allow
them to do a better job, and this may be the kludge that gets us through
for now, but you want as much core functionality to happen at the lowest
level possible to provide the best experience and most flexible
experience.  IMO.

-Nick

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:

>
> > On 07 Jul 2015, at 16:30 , Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:
> >
> > Ivan,
> >
> > There are several hyphenation polyfills, such as
> >
> > https://github.com/mnater/hyphenator
> > https://github.com/bramstein/Hypher
> >
> > It’s been a while since I looked at any of them. One problem I noticed
> the
> > last time I looked was that they change the page source by adding tons of
> > discretionary hyphens that then either cause problems with search and
> > copy/paste, or more and more code has to be added to accommodate the
> > discretionary hyphens in those cases.
>
> Ouch:-)
>
> > So I’d classify hyphenation as one
> > of those features that is *possible* to polyfill, but it’s really too
> much
> > work to do it well.
> >
>
> O.k. Is this only a wrong example (ie, there are other features where
> polyfills could fill in for a missing browser implementation) or is it
> generally something to avoid?
>
> Ivan
>
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Alan
> >
> > On 7/7/15, 5:10 AM, "Ivan Herman" <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Hey Dave,
> >>
> >> I like the approach. For the first category (and maybe even the second)
> >> there may be one more column: whether polyfills exist for the
> >> specification, ie, if it is not implemented by a browser, but if a
> >> reading system accepts polyfills, can that be used. E.g., I have seen
> >> somewhere a polyfill for hyphenation to have it working in chrome (I
> have
> >> not tested it, though).
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >>
> >> Ivan
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 07 Jul 2015, at 13:57 , Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Since the meeting yesterday I've continued to work on the priorities
> >>> document on GitHub [1].
> >>>
> >>> I've done some triage by splitting the table of priorities into three
> >>> parts: First, features that just require more implementations, as the
> >>> spec is stable and they already exist in several browsers. Second,
> >>> features that require more spec work. Third, features that require some
> >>> fundamental design work before specs can be written (many aspects of
> >>> pagination fall into this category, I believe).
> >>>
> >>> I've also continued to add more features from the Google Spreadsheet
> >>> [2]. I still have some work to do, especially for math, hyphenation,
> and
> >>> pagination.
> >>>
> >>> * * *
> >>>
> >>> I would appreciate feedback on the whole idea, as well as more specific
> >>> assistance in the various subject areas, especially CJK.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>
> >>> Dave
> >>>
> >>> [1] http://w3c.github.io/dpub-pagination/priorities.html
> >>> [2]
> >>>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15IsDMPwSXx197Iqe4I9xh7K8anmJ5c0-O
> >>> FEG7w0LHYM/edit?usp=sharing
> >>
> >>
> >> ----
> >> Ivan Herman, W3C
> >> Digital Publishing Activity Lead
> >> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> >> mobile: +31-641044153
> >> ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> ----
> Ivan Herman, W3C
> Digital Publishing Activity Lead
> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> mobile: +31-641044153
> ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
- Nick Ruffilo
@NickRuffilo
http://Aerbook.com
http://ZenOfTechnology.com <http://zenoftechnology.com/>