Re: [css-ui] outline-stye: auto

On Thursday 2013-10-17 11:38 -0700, Scott Rowe wrote:
> At the Web Platform Doc Sprint in Amsterdam on October 12th, we were
> documenting the new *auto* value for the *outline-style* property,
> described in the CSS Basic User Interface Module Level 3 (CSS3 UI) [1].
[...]
> The specification reads as follows: "The ‘auto’ value permits the user
> agent to render a custom outline style, typically a style which is either a
> user interface default for the platform, or perhaps a style that is richer
> than can be described in detail in CSS, e.g. a rounded edge outline with
> semi-translucent outer pixels that appears to glow. As such, this
> specification does not define how the ‘outline-color’ is incorporated or
> used (if at all) when rendering ‘auto’ style outlines. User agents may
> treat ‘auto’ as ‘solid’."
> 
> This description, besides being laughably verbose, points out a clear
> problem with the spec: it does not specify a operand to which the
> *auto*value resolves.

I don't see why you think it's laughably verbose, nor do I see why
you think there's a problem with the spec, nor do I know what you
mean by an operand.

The value is intended to allow user-agents to draw focus outlines in
an appropriate platform-native style, or in some other appropriate
style if there is no platform-native style.  That requires giving a
bunch of latitude since we don't know exactly what the
platform-native style looks like.

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂
             Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
             What I was walling in or walling out,
             And to whom I was like to give offense.
               - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)