dollar sign in CSS variable

Hello internationalization folks,

There is an ongoing hot discussion[1] about a new proposal for CSS,
namely introducing variables into the CSS format. The proposal uses the
dollar prefix, say, $var, to indicate variables. A concern about whether
the dollar sign is *easily* available on keyboards around the worlds was
raised[2].

Taking a little look at a Wikipedia entry[3], in several keyboard
layouts, including the Danish and Estonian, the dollar sign can't be
reached with only the shift key. As far as I know, Perl and PHP use the
dollar sign as certain variable indicator, but I googled and find no
complaints about this. I wondering it is considered OK in the
perspective of internationalization to introduce the dollar sign to CSS.

I had an uncomfortable experience to find the hash on an Italian
keyboard (because in the world of Semantic Web/Linked Data, the hash is
widely used), and the Italian girl told me that it isn't that easy for
her too. What about the dollar sign?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Feb/thread#msg311
[2] http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/css/20110209#l-412
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout

Cheers,
Kenny

Received on Sunday, 13 February 2011 23:38:46 UTC