Re: [css3-background] New use case for background-position-x (&y!)

On Nov 11, 2010, at 2:59 AM, Lee Kowalkowski wrote:

> On 11/11/2010, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> No, most of your objections were to the fact that we didn't consider
>> spriting to be a worthy use case for the backgrounds spec, and our use of
>> words like "unintended" to mean that it is not our intension to write a
>> backgrounds spec in order to enable sprite use, and that we considered such
>> use to be a hack.
> 
> All I'm saying is just because background-position doesn't fully
> address all potential requirements for sprites, doesn't make it a
> hack.  

I never said that background-position was a hack. What I said was that using it for spriting is what we consider a hack. Hacks are not necessarily bad things, but helping a hack work better is not a valid enough reason to change the spec.

> A hack is for unexpected things, not unintended things.  

I think you are just getting too hung up on the word "hack", just as you did with the word "unintended". In the CSS WG, we tend to call this sort of use a hack, for reasons Tab and I have tried to explain to you. Call it "pseudo-hack", "off-label use", "Fred", or whatever, the point remains the same: that it is not, in itself, compelling enough reason to change the spec. 

> 
>> I think we are all willing to listen to non-sprite reasons
>> for splitting the property into two X/Y properties.
> 
> There was a suggestion from Behdad about using them independently in
> CSS Animations.  That sounds good, what about that?

I think that is a much more compelling reason, although as Simon pointed our, it is a more general problem than just background-position. So perhaps a more general solution is needed.

I've never said I was fundamentally opposed to splitting out the properties. I'm not. Fantasai's original comment that started all your disagreement was that she wasn't aware of any use cases other than this "hack" use. If there are more compelling reasons, or even if the reason is that all the major Web browsers are doing it anyway without any problems, then we need to consider that (for CSS4 backgrounds, most likely).

Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 18:12:38 UTC