- From: fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net>
- Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:27:33 -0700
- To: Dean Jackson <dino@grorg.org>
- CC: www-style@w3.org, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
Dean Jackson wrote: > >>> I'm curious - do you have *any* use-cases for a number that can't be >>> plainly stated without exponents? >> >> As tempting as it is to sit around all day reading specifications and >> looking for inconsistencies, I actually did come across this in real >> content. In this case is was for implementing getComputedStyle. >> >> Of course, this doesn't mean plainly stating the number is impossible. >> I just think that exponents are more user friendly than something like >> 0.000000000000001234. > > Another reason to allow this is that most implementors will use > printf-type library methods to convert floating point numbers for output > as strings. In these cases they'll want to control the number of > significant digits displayed and only exponential notation allows such > control for very big or small numbers. > > We suspect this is why some browsers have actually implemented > exponential notation even though the specification doesn't allow it > (and, in the WebKit case for example, breaks round-tripping of computed > style at them moment). Dean, what exactly is your use case here? What property needs to take values so large or so small that exponentiation and significant digits make a difference? ~fantasai
Received on Saturday, 6 September 2008 03:28:22 UTC