[CSSWG] Minutes Lyon F2F 2018-10-22 Part IV: Math on Web Pages Joint Meeting, WPT Joint Meeting

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Math on Web Pages Joint Meeting
-------------------------------

  - The Math on Web Pages group presented a list of challenges they
      face trying to style math using CSS:
      https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2018Oct/0002.html
  - There were several proposals and use cases for the working group
      to review later which could be added to current or future specs.
      The ones touched on briefly during the meeting were a better way
      to handle baseline alignment and creating sticky fences to
      handle things like long brackets.

WPT Joint Meeting
-----------------

  - A year ago the CSSWG resolved to always require tests with CR
      changes; this meeting was to review the ramifications of that
      decision a year later.
  - There continues to be a resource problem where there are more
      changes put into specs than there are people writing tests and
      PRs still aren't getting reviewed in a timely manner.
  - A suggestion was to change the requirement to one test per commit
      which reduces the burden on authors, but still increases the
      likelihood that changes are noticed.
  - gregwhitworth and jensimmons also said they would continue to look
      into more community support for testing.

===== FULL MINUTES BELOW ======

Agenda: https://wiki.csswg.org/planning/tpac-2018#schedule

Scribe: fantasai

Math on Web Pages Joint Meeting
===============================
  Full Presentation:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2018Oct/0002.html
  Simplified Presentation:
https://github.com/w3c/mathonwebpages/wiki/%5BCSS-TF%5D-TPAC-2018-preparations

Introductions
-------------

  arno: I used to be in CSSWG many years ago, but no longer with that
        employer so here representing myself
  arno: Wanted to talk about opportunities to make representing math
        on the Web better
  daniel: I'm co-chair of Math on Web Pages community group
  pkra: I'm an independent consultant working with STEM publishers
  VolkerS: I'm here in my role as 1/2 of mathjax development team. I'm
           mainly on the a11y side and parsing, but know a bit about
           the css

Overview of Challenges
----------------------

  arno: We only have 25min before the break, so we're going to try
  arno: Don't expect to solve the world's problems, but want to talk
        to you about some of the challenges we face in using HTML+CSS
        to present equations on the Web
  arno: There's lots of solutions that do that, not that it's
        unsolveable, but what we think is worth exploring is how we
        can make the authoring of this content easier using CSS
  arno: Using a lot of workarounds and hacky solutions
  arno: Have some solutions of improvements to make it easier for this
        type of content.
  arno: Also want to look at improvements that are not just beneficial
        for authoring MathML content
  arno: But some of these solutions could also benefit others
  arno: Talking about some of the things important to us, and
        solutions to those problems

  arno: First of all we care a lot about quality of the rendering
  arno: Our goal is to achieve the same quality on the Web as on print
  arno: No reason why you can't have the same precision in layout and
        same typographical quality on the web as you have in print
  arno: We recognize that getting there will take some time, but want
        to shoot for.

  arno: One issue we have, a lot of layouts we have to do in css for
        math, is that we have to use a lot of inline styles
  arno: Improved a lot so we don't have to do as much computation on
        the client side to do positioning
  arno: CSS added a lot of additional features which gives us more
        control to do layout
  arno: But still many cases where we have to bake in inline styles,
        e.g. exact lengths for vertical alignment
  arno: We'd prefer not to do that

  arno: ... content on the fly
  arno: If you modify the content, vertical alignment, inline styles
        have to be recalculated
  arno: This is acceptable if you're authoring a library or tool, but
        if we want the authoring to be more accessible
  arno: To be able to author math content with a text editor, need to
        get past this
  arno: So need a solution for that.

  arno: Would also like solutions that improve the stability of the
        layout
  arno: So if you make some changes to the content, would like to be
        able to do that without modifying the rest of the layout,
        having to recalculate everything and re-inject inline styles
        into the markup

  arno: Math fonts is a sort of emerging technology
  arno: For those not familiar, they're an OpenType standard that lets
        you put inside a font side metadata that will allow adapting
        mathematical glyphs, e.g. stretched fences and integrals
  arno: It's great to have that part of the font file
  arno: Today, oftentimes you have to carry them alongside a hard coded
        knowledge of specific fonts. Which is terrible
  arno: This isn't great because user can't just change the font
  arno: So having metric information about the layout, very promising
        technology

  arno: So that's an overview of where we're looking for improvements
  arno: Some of the challenges we have
  arno: Not an exhaustive list
  arno: Some of them we can sort of work around, but it's ugly
  arno: Focusing on ones where the workarounds are the ugliest
  arno: And try to have improvements that benefit beyond just math

  arno: One example is stretchy fences
  arno: Here's an example, it's genealogy
  arno: When you have a genealogical tree, you connect the parents and
        offspring with long brackets
  arno: This is something very common in math, that's used for group
        equations
  arno: Matrices
  arno: And other cases
  arno: Point of this is to remind you that this is something that's
        used beyond math cases
  arno: Doing stretchy fences is possible today, but requires a lot of
        trickeries and is very fragile
  <jensimmons> We (dauwhe, florian and I) were just saying this
               yesterday — it’d be awesome to have a ‘stretchy’ open
               bracket
  arno: Have to composite multiple glyphs together and hope they don't
        break as the layout changes, zoom level is increased, etc.
  arno: Wouldn't it be great if there was a simpler way to do this
        with CSS?
  arno: Especially to use the stretchy bracket as the border of a box.
  arno: And have the rendering engine take care of that

  Myles: Idea that you just described, stretchy... would you expect
         that the browser would create the form of the stretchy glyph
         itself or pick out glyphs from a font?
  arno: Ideally, information from the font would be used
  arno: in traditional typography, e.g. serif font and sans-serif font
        are different
  arno: Unicode has codepoints for this
  arno: So ideal world, we'd use the info from the font

  arno: Moving on to another challenge
  arno: Baseline alignment
  arno: It's one of those where it's not an unsolved problem, there
        are ways to do them, but all of them involve inline styles and
        positioning and vertical-align and all unpleasant
  arno: Depends on the content, and if the content changes, have to
        change the values for the line
  arno: Want to move away from inline styles as much as possible
  arno: Needed for lining up equations
  arno: But also needed for lining up fonts and icon text
  [arno shows example from his doc]
  arno: Don't have one specific solution in mind
  arno: There are some imperfect solutions today, and some discussed
        e.g. in css-inline-3
  arno: Having that incorporated into inline layout model would be
        fantastic
  arno: We'd love to make ourselves available if you have more
        questions
  arno: If that's the direction that you'd like to go

  TabAtkins: In the example the baseline is being taken from some
             descendant. It's not an arbitrary position.
  TabAtkins: If that's the case, I think the implementation shouldn't
             be too unreasonable, because we already drill down into
             descendants to find a baseline
  TabAtkins: So just need to be able to have a child say "I'm the
             baseline for this container" and the container to look
             for that child
  TabAtkins: This other example doesn't have such a case, the baseline
             is totally arbitrary place

  heycam: I've always thought that there should be some way for
          external svg elements should be able to declare where their
          baseline is
  fantasai: There were proposals in the past to be able to specify
            where the baseline of an atomic inline is. (Was deferred
            to later, not prioritized for this level.)

  koji: If there is another example that doesn't have text of the same
        font size, how do you align it?
  arno: If the size changes, would still use the baseline. Would still
        want to align along that axis.
  koji: So not really aligned to that red line (running along the
        alphabetic baseline)
  arno: There's another axis for the exponent, e.g. aetc.

  emilio: Webkit and Gecko have MathML implementations where you could
          do this?
  arno: We want improvements so you could express things with HTML and
        CSS only
  arno: Built in support is great, but ...
  emilio: Why?
  emilio: Why not use MathML which was explicitly designed to do this?
  arno: There are some use cases where MathML doesn't work.
  arno: For example, some software does interactive editing.
  arno: To be able to do the layout with CSS + HTML is better
  emilio: I don't know why you wouldn't be able to mutate MathML
  astearns: There's some cases here that aren't MathML, like the
            genealogical case
  florian: Another case where MathML isn't ideal, the type of MathML
           needed here is the presentational version, but for a11y the
           semantic version is better
  florian: Could instead render to HTML+CSS
  florian: Also presentational MathML is less interoperably and
           robustly implemented, so use a different technology
  florian: Store the semantics differently and render to HTML+CSS

  arno: So let me go quickly to another example of things that we're
        looking for
  arno: Here is enclosures, which is a way to annotate a MathML
        equation
  arno: This is something that is often used to highlight ? equation
  arno: This is also defined in MathML, but would also want to use it
        in other context
  arno: Want to use those constructs in other contexts
  arno: These are currently difficult to implement using CSS + HTML
  arno: Need to do the layout twice, calculate the size of the
        bounding box that you want to decorate
  arno: We hope it to be easier
  TabAtkins: I would think that a lot of this can be done in the Paint
             API
  TabAtkins: We've done a lot of work with Google teams about shaping
             around content, and would love to get more use cases
  TabAtkins: Talk to iank next to you :)

  myles: When you render to HTML+CSS, presumably the result is
         positioned... how?
  myles: Is it abspos?
  arno: No
  arno: Software I worked on -- there are others out there --
        mathdive, as much as possible the layout and positioning of
        glyphs is deferred to the layout engine
  arno: So horizontal positioning is done by the HTML. I just have to
        do some adjustments, especially for stacking, of the boxes
  arno: Used to be much more difficult to do
  arno: Other implementations that used abspos for glyphs, but I think
        that things have progressed enough
  arno: Now looking at the remaining gaps

  myles: But you don't use grid/flexbox?
  arno: Some implementations are
  arno: They're looking into it
  arno: A good opportunity to simplify some of the layout, especially
        for stacked constructs
  arno: baseline alignment
  arno: but in terms of making it able to have fewer inline styles,
        it's a good way

Summary
-------

  arno: Few more things to talk about
  arno: Roots, a special case of enclosures
  arno: stretch fences
  arno: Accents and decorations are a related topic
  arno: A few other topics
  arno: More on the list, less straightforward or more specific in
        their use cases
  arno: So wanted to focus on these
  arno: Wanted engagement with this community, how can we address
        these things
  arno: Use some features in CSS, or some features you're working on
        for next level of the modules
  arno: Happy to be sounding board, provide use cases
  arno: So that's what we're looking for

  astearns: Is this document public?
  arno: Can make it public
  florian: Please output to HTML or PDF and send to www-archive@w3.org
  florian: More long-lived than google docs
  astearns: Thanks, can work on some or all of these issues
  astearns: For now, let's work on break

  <br type=tea end=4pm>

Joint Meeting with WPT
======================
  Scribe: TabAtkins

  zcorpan: A year or so ago this group adopted a testing policy for
           some specs, including OM and OM-View
  zcorpan: And also specs in CR, that normative changes should be
           coupled with wpt
  zcorpan: I want to understand how this policy is working in
           practice, and if there are any blockers to using this for
           spec editors
  zcorpan: If there should be someone to work on testing specifically,
           or if it should be editors' responsibility.
  zcorpan: What is the process, and what do we want it to be? What, if
           anything, is blocking no-test-no-merge policy for CSS specs?

  florian: I think what happened is what we feared would happen. Some
           editors, like myself, who are responsible for a few specs
           but not the overall health of CSS, were able to stick to
           that policy. But Tab and Elika can't do that without
           dropping the amount of work they do on specs, and we don't
           want them to do that.
  florian: And nobody's picked up the tests to go with their changes.
  florian: So, it's not just the three of us in this WG that do specs
           and tests and such. But the policy as a group, is indeed
           blocked by the fact that there's not enough people writing
           tests to go along with the edits.
  florian: For some editors it's reasonable to drop spec output to
           increase test output, but not for other editors. I don't
           know how to solve that.
  florian: I'll keep doing my part, but... I don't think it's possible
           for the WG unless we have more people to do just tests to
           compensate.

  Chris_Lilley: We need more people to do edits, too, is the thing.
  fremy: Same point - I disagree we should say there should be
         spec-specific people, and I disagree that Tab and Elika
         should be reducing their output to write tests. We have a big
         group, we have a lot of ideas. We have big companies here, we
         should make sure we staff the testing group specifically.
  fremy: If we don't have enough people to even do the editing work,
         obviously we don't have enough for the testing work.

  rbyers: Of these changes that don't have tests, are there impl
          changes happening too?
  rbyers: In Chromium, devs need to land tests at the same time. Does
          that apply here?

  florian: A success here is the Contain spec. As an editor I focused
           on writing a test for every change I made, but we didn't
           have tests at the beginning. Igalia implemented, and wrote
           tests as they went; I also commissioned tests from Gérard
           to fill the gaps.

  dbaron: Another risk with not having tests is the implementor
          doesn't notice the change.
  dbaron: Because we don't have a great mechanism for making sure
          changes get into implementations... there's still a problem
          with noticing the change.
  <cbiesinger> agree with dbaron -- there's several flexbox spec
               changes I didn't notice until someone filed a bug
  <cbiesinger> or mozilla upstreamed a test :)
  foolip: Are bugs being filed in the issue trackers to track changes?
  fantasai: Not systematically done or tracked right now. We have a
            label for changes that need tests, but not one to track
            things that need bugs.
  Chris_Lilley: When I was doing Fonts 3, we were already well-tested
                and most things were implemented, so I was able to
                keep track of everything. But across all specs,
                they're at much different levels of implementation.
  foolip: What's also been happening is the spec change is made, then
          we have tests written before the change that contradict them.
  foolip: But the big risk is changes that don't get noticed by anyone.
  gsnedders: And the spec is then not implemented as written, because
             the change was never made in implementations and no test
             was written for it, and that isn't noticed.

  foolip: All the changes being made, what would happen if changes
          *were* blocked on tests.
  foolip: Where's the pressure to make changes in the first place?
  fantasai: It comes from people giving feedback on specs. Some are
            implementors, who can write a test immediately because
            they're implementing, but sometimes they just notice
            something but aren't working on it, and won't get back to
            it for a year.
  fantasai: Some are filed by users of the tech that have issues with
            how it behaves. Some are filed by WG members or other
            reviewers.
  fantasai: So some of these have incentive to write a test, others
            don't.
  foolip: So either they care enough to share a burden, or they don't.
          In HTML, random person writes a PR, then we require them to
          write a test.
  cbiesinger: Sometimes people in general will just file an issue that
              something needs to be clarified. It may not be clear
              what the right behavior even is, so it might be
              low-priority. By the time we get around to fixing the
              issue, the reporter might not even be around.
  florian: We have many cases of people qualified to point out a
           problem, but not qualified to fix it.
  florian: So it's we as a group that need to make the fix, and make
           the test.
  jensimmons: I'd have a big problem with this group deciding that
              only people who have the time and skill to write tests
              can contribute to CSS. That's not a route we want to go
              down.
  jensimmons: I do think we need more test-writing. I've had
              conversations; there are many people who'd like to write
              tests, but there's no clear way to get involved.
  jensimmons: And even when they do get wind of how to get involved,
              the tools are complex and there's lots of blockers that
              make people give up.
  jensimmons: There are people in this group, like Greg and Rachel,
              that have said that is an important thing they want to
              work on.
  jensimmons: I think there are hundreds of people who want to
              contribute, with an easier on-ramp.
  <florian> +1000 to what Jen said

  <heycam> a few years ago we had the Test the Web Forward project --
           was that successful?
  <TabAtkins> not really
  <glazou> heycam yes it was immensely helpful
  <gsnedders> I'm unaware of any repeat contributor we got from TTWF
  <glazou> gsnedders right, but it did help

  fremy: I think to answer your question, the answer is "backlog".
         There's already more work pouring in everyday than this group
         can work on.
  fremy: We as a group still care about fixing the spec, because it's
         wrong.
  foolip: For any big project, obviously there's a big backlog. Given
          the resources available, is it more effective to just work
          on the spec, or ensure that spec and test work happen
          together.
  foolip: Hypothesis I put forth last year is that if you do the test
          work, people will notice something has changed, and
          implementors will follow along faster.
  foolip: That's not proven, but if that's true, whatever amount of
          resources are available, doing this work together makes more
          sense than doing just the spec work.
  zcorpan: I think the experience with HTML is that it does result in
           impl changes more consistently.
  zcorpan: Before this policy we'd sometimes have spec changes, not
           write tests, then revert the change because nobody
           implemented it.
  zcorpan: I think this proposal helps with that issue.

  gregwhitworth: I still stand by what we said last year - we all have
                 wpt.fyi externally, so we can see the changes.
  gregwhitworth: To Jen's point, I've set up some mentorships with
                 folks; there's a lot more ramp-up to writing good
                 tests than I think we realize. There's a lot of
                 webdevs out there, but when we narrow it down, the
                 number who have the time is quite small, but still
                 something we should pursue.
  gregwhitworth: I'll grab some of the people that might be relevant
                 and talk about this.
  gregwhitworth: I don't want us to focus so hard on the suites
                 themselves. Is it worth spending 80% of time on the
                 20% of effort to perfect the testsuite?
  gregwhitworth: I don't want fantasai to spend so much time writing up
                 tests just because she's the most knowledgeable.
  gregwhitworth: I bet we have about 70 people in this room. Some of
                 us are tied to more implementors. So instead, just
                 think about a *single* test that fails.
  gregwhitworth: Putting together a *single* new test for a change
                 that would fail in non-conforming browsers would
                 still be a ton of help.
  foolip: And there's also the problem of big new features, where it's
          too formative to be worth writing a comprehensive suite.
  TabAtkins: I think I can commit to writing a single test per change.
             Just as a signaling mechanism that something has changed,
             that seems sufficiently high-value and low-effort that I
             think I can gate myself that way without a significant
             slowdown.

  heycam: I think I agree that making tests at same time as changes is
          ideal. Given resource constraints of the group, wonder if
          it's more important to track things that do need tests;
          seems that could be mostly automated.
  heycam: So when we have free time, or external people look at
          something, or a new implementor comes in...
  astearns: We do have a "Needs Tests" tag that we give to issues.
  heycam: That's tied to GH issues; not all changes are tied to GH
          issues, particularly early on.

  dbaron: There's been a lot of talk about resource constraints for
          editors.
  dbaron: Think about that in a different way.
  dbaron: One of the things we end up doing a lot is we end up
          revisiting changes, discussing multiple times, because
          they're not implemented and now we have a compat constraint.
  dbaron: There are reasons why, when we started using tests in
          software dev, even tho we spent more time writing tests, I
          think people agree that we overall moved faster.
  dbaron: I think HTML editors found the same thing. Even tho you're
          stopping to do this extra work, you can accomplish more,
          because it makes the work more likely to stick.
  dbaron: It also sometimes causes you to think more about the change,
          think about other cases.
  dbaron: But mostly it makes it less likely we have to revisit things
          later.
  <tantek> +1 what dbaron is saying
  dbaron: So I think the "one test per change" is good.

  florian: Another bottleneck is test reviews.
  florian: I have 13 open PRs right now, oldest back from April.
  florian: I can write as many tests as I want, but I can't review my
           own tests.
  foolip: What do you do when tests get stuck?
  florian: Poke, but often the best people to poke are Tab and Elika,
           and we're back to the bandwidth problem. ^_^
  foolip: This is an issue for many groups.
  foolip: I don't think it's a tooling problem.
  foolip: Say we add a role for someone to go thru Needs Tests label,
          or to write together with spec changes. Unless that's
          blocking, and keeps blocking, any changes you make will be
          eroded.
  florian: Another thing about test reviews is that they seem trivial,
           but they're not.
  florian: Ask the editor, it's probably not hard. Ask someone else,
           it's not. Reviewing one test might be a 20-hour task, as
           you have to read the spec first.

  krit: For Transforms there are some PRs I've put up, and they still
        need review.
  krit: For editors of the spec, could we lift the requirement that
        someone else needs to do a review?
  florian: I think it's good to have reviews, but if you're blocked...
  gregwhitworth: And they'll get reviewed by the implementors when
                 they review the test later anyway, when they see that
                 they're failing it.
  foolip: We could tweak wpt-pr-bot to not require reviews from
          certain people...


  <rachelandrew> having dug through all the legacy multicol tests
                 recently, and inlined them in the spec, very grateful
                 for the work TabAtkins did adding that functionality
                 to Bikeshed.

  <gregwhitworth> https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/LvLPxBCS/
  <zcorpan> ty all

  <dbaron> I'm in favor of allowing editors to land tests without
           review.
  <AmeliaBR> The problem with editors writing their own tests without
             review is that sometimes they are testing what they
             *meant* the spec to say, not what it currently says. Can
             end up with requirements that only exist in the tests,
             not the spec.

  <foolip> I filed https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt-pr-bot/issues/47

Received on Tuesday, 13 November 2018 00:23:26 UTC