RE: Opacity 0-1: Bad Idea?

Hello,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Andy
> Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 10:38 PM
> To: www-style@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Opacity 0-1: Bad Idea?
>
>
> Dmitry Beransky wrote:
> >
> > Actually, I can see why Kevin might have thought so.  The spec says:
> >
> >    Any values outside the range 0.0 (fully transparent) to 1.0
> >    (fully opaque) will be clipped to this range.
> >
> > using '0.0' and '1.0' instead of '0' and '1'. Strictly speaking, this
> > implies that the precision is only to the first decimal position.
>
>
> This is all very nice, but ultimately, it would be *much* clearer
> as a percentage:
>
> opacity:100%; //yup. looks like fully opaque to me
> opacity:10%; // that reads as pretty transparent to me
>
> opacity:1; // well, might be 100% opaque I suppose
> opacity:0.6; // is that just more than halfway transparent? or just less?
>
> Of course, since everyone I've ever spoken to refers to the effect as
> "transparency" and pretty much everything is 100% opaque by default and
> one only needs to trot out the opacity attribute if one wants to make
> something "somewhat transparent", I've never understood why its not
>
> transparency:75%; //three quarters see through - now that makes sense...
>
> No one says "that pane of glass in that window is semi-opaque". It would
> always be "transparent" (or translucent!). Its just not English!
1. We are not talking of glass ;) We are talking of screen and print. The
overall result is, as long as you do not use augmented reality cyber
glasses, and I am sure you don't, opaque, not transparent or translucent.
And on translucent screens *imho* it is opacity, what you want to control,
not transparency, if you really want to semantically differ between "not
opaque" and "transparent" / "translucent".
2. opacity is just as English as transparent or translucent: Either all
three are or all three are not (because they all come from Latin, not German
etc.).
3. By default, something is opaque, not transparent. So I prefer opacity for
a property name.
4. There is no reason to complain about the English language being so rich
of words, this is what keeps it being a nice language. Many can read the W3C
specs only with a dictionary anyway. If it is really a problem for some
English native speakers to understand some words of their own language...
Just show a little more respect for those that do not speak English as their
native language and that do not need to look up just a few words but many
more.

> Since CSS3 is not final, now's the ideal time to change!
I am against a change. I think the specs are understandable enough regarding
that wording.


Greetings

Christian

Received on Sunday, 11 November 2001 17:55:23 UTC