Re: Proposal: Generalized Cascading Sheets

> On Jul 30, 2015, at 12:29, Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com> wrote:
> 
> We seem to consider the proposed GCS as a "superset" of CSS. I tend to
> disagree.

Although I’m worried about syntactic extensions derailing the conversation and stalling GCS, I’m not sure it’s feasible for it to not be a superset. You already suggested one way in which it’s a superset: Being able to turn cascading off, depending on the language. CSS cannot turn cascading off, so in a sense, your vision for GCS is already a superset.

> CSS should then be seen as one example of GCS-based languages only.

Yes, that’s the idea :)

> So I think the GCS name is badly chosen:
> 
>  - it's not all about cascading languages (my STTS proposal was not
>    cascading). A language based on it could even be all about at-rules
>    and not using Selectors at all or weird things like that.

While not all GCS languages are cascading, Cascade, Specificity & Inheritance are crucial parts of the syntax that I think should be in GCS, not just in CSS, even if not every GCS language uses them. Without them, you essentially have a glorified JSON-like structure with selectors as keys, which is of less interest.

Also, I’m not sure every XML language is a Markup Language (defined as “annotating a document in a way that is clearly distinguishable from the text” [1]). Do you think that’s a badly chosen name too?

>  - it's not about generalizing things, it's about finding the lowest
>    common denominator to an existing technology and future ones

Generalized in the sense that it's not about a fixed set of properties, @rules etc, but that every GCS language can define its own. Syntactically, it *is* a generalization of CSS Syntax. Anyhow, I also suggested XCS (eXtensible Cascading Sheets), which is on par with XML’s naming.

> I would prefer something like Declarative Sheets or Declarative
> Statement Sheets (with it convenient acronym DSS…).

Statement is a term from imperative languages [2], so not sure it’s a good idea, given that these are definitely declarative.
Declarative Sheets is too non-descriptive and gives you a two letter initialism, which is hard to google for.

Anyhow, like I said, the name is TBB :)

A few more suggestions:

- XPS/GPS: eXtensible/Generalized Property Sheets
- XDS/GDS: eXtensible/Generalized Description Sheets
- XAS/GAS: eXtensible/Generalized Augmentation Sheets (from Håkon’s wording)

Feel free to add your own! Having a name makes it easier to talk about something and gives motivation to work on it, so I don’t think it’s pointless at all. :)

Cheers,
Lea

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming

Received on Thursday, 30 July 2015 10:22:38 UTC