Re: [css3-background] grammar issue

On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Brad Kemper wrote:

>
>
> On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:48 AM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> background: url(img.png) / 90%;
>>> or...
>>> background:  / 90%;
>> 
>> Both of these look like nonsense to me.  A slash shouldn't exist
>> unless there's actually something *there* to separate.
>
> I disagree. In border-image you can have nothingness between the two slashes. 
What?? If that's true (and the grammar seems to allow that, 
unfortunately), then it's really insane, unless 'nothing' is an allowed 
value, but I bet it is not.

> It doesn't make it look like nonsense; it is perfectly clear and readable. As 
> long as you know what values can appear on which sides of each slash 
> (something that is at least as easy to learn as 'as' meaning 'size'), then it 
> makes perfect sense.

It depends on the background (no pun intended) of the reader. To you it 
seems clear and readable, to me it is a clear abuse of the notion of 
separators. (CSS3 is not a new version of CSS, isn't it? :) )

>>> It is also used in /* comments */, where it does a similarly good job of 
>>> separating comments from the values around them.
>> 
>> I think comments are pretty clearly something else altogether.
>
> Obviously. The point is that the slash character works very well visually to 
> separate out one run of text (comments, values, whatever) from another. It 
> works better than a pipe character, for instance, in that it creates a little 
> more horizontal whitespace to separate, while still being full height to 
> stand out clearly from it's surroundings, and doesn't look as much like a 
> lowercase L. It is much more quickly distinguishable as a separator than, 
> say, a couple of (often) lowercase letters in a shorthand already full of 
> possible keywords. If I were to design a character to be used as a separator 
> (other than the space character) for a new alphabet, it would probably look a 
> lot like a slash.

-- 
Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras.

         ~~Yves

Received on Thursday, 25 February 2010 20:43:27 UTC