Re: [css3-background] last call for comments on "Backgrounds and borders"

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Zack Weinberg <zweinberg@mozilla.com> wrote:
> fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
>> Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> > It seems to me that the border-image shorthand would be more user
>> > friendly if it allowed slashes between any two option groups.
>> > Something like
>> >
>> >     <‘border-image-source’> || /? <‘border-image-slice’>
>> >         [ / <‘border-image-width’>? [ /
>> > <‘border-image-outset’>  ]? ]? || /? <‘border-image-repeat’>
>> >
>> > I *think* this does not make the grammar ambiguous, and it means
>> > authors don't have to remember which blocks take slashes and which
>> > don't.
>>
>> The CSS Working Group has discussed your proposal and decided not
>> to make this change. You can read the minutes of the discussion
>> here:
>> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2009Nov/0265.html>
>
> I don't care strongly about this, but I wish to point out that the
> discussion as minuted sounds like people thought I was proposing to
> *require* slashes, which was not my intention.  Rather, I thought it
> would be friendly to *permit* slashes between any two option groups.
> As is, authors have to remember that you *do* put a slash between slice
> and width, width and outset, but *not* between source and slice or
> before repeat.  Which is fine (especially now that I realize what || in
> the syntax actually means) but for people who don't want to remember
> that, allowing a slash would make life simpler.

Well, the rule is basically "put slashes between groups of numbers".
We can tell keywords apart from each other; numbers are the only thing
that needs it.  This is what we do for other properties that use a
slash - it's only used in the rare places where we have multiple
numbers that can't be disambiguated purely by position.

So it's not really necessary to remember precisely where the slashes
go, just that you put it between groups of numbers.  I think that's
pretty easy.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 20 November 2009 05:25:49 UTC