- From: Andrew Fedoniouk <news@terrainformatica.com>
- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:37:36 -0700
- To: "Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- CC: Zack Weinberg <zweinberg@mozilla.com>, www-style <www-style@w3.org>
Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) wrote:
>
>
> Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
>
>> '*' as a unit is used already in these places:
>>
>> 1) In html, so called multi-length or relative units:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-length
>> Used in tables[in supporting UAs] and framesets (@cols and @rows).
>
> Thank you, I confess I had overlooked that (in that
> I was unaware of multilengths per se, although I had
> seen the asterisk used in frameset specifications
> -- and completely failed to understand it).
>
>> 2) In following CSS3 proposals:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid/
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-layout/
>
> OK, but they are still /proposals/ : there is
> still time to get "*" replaced by something
> more mnemonic :-)
>
'*' can be used alone as a short form of '1*'. For example if you want
to put element in the bottom right corner of
its container you can write:
#middle
{
margin: * 0 0 *;
}
Such short form will not work with mnemonics - will clash with #name
production in CSS grammar.
I mean that this:
#middle
{
margin: 1flex 0 0 1flex;
}
cannot be reduced to this:
#middle
{
margin: flex 0 0 flex;
}
without major changes in lex definitions.
And yes, these are proposals (above), but note - written by different
authors. That means this idea/notation is somehow common.
> Philip TAYLOR
>
Received on Tuesday, 14 April 2009 19:38:18 UTC