Re: 'initial' | 'inherit' inconsistency

Brad Kemper wrote:
> On Oct 29, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Eric A. Meyer wrote:
> 
>> At 12:20 AM -0700 10/29/10, fantasai wrote:
>>
>>> I would prefer to have each CSS3 module add its own blanket statement
>>> the way CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders does [1], but not include the
>>> values in their property definitions. The grammar for many CSS3
>>> properties is already fairly complex: grouping the entire thing in
>>> an extra set of brackets in order to add "| inherit" just makes it
>>> more confusing.
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-background/#values
>>   Actually it would be to add " | initial | inherit", but I understand your objection.  I disagree that doing as you suggest is a good idea, though.  It's all too easy to say, as a reader (whether you're a page author or an implementor), "Hmmm, what's the syntax of 'animation-timing-function' again?  Let me Google.  Okay, here it is."  And there's no indication of 'initial' or 'inherit' as possible values.  Even if you heard one time that those values are supposed to be accepted by all properties and remember that fact, in the effort to understand the actual syntax of the property it's easy to let the "universal" keywords slip your mind.
> 
>  It does seem to me that we should at least add "initial" to the blanket statement, like this:
> 
> # All properties defined in this specification also accept the 'inherit' and 'initial' keywords (individually) as their value, but for readability it has not been listed explicitly.
> 
> 
> Beyond that, I'm not so sure having universal values slip the mind is really that great a concern. How many times does a person need to be reminded before they just accept that they are truly universal unless noted otherwise? The statement at the top seems enough, since search engines don't usually link to anchors within the page. Maybe the heading could be "Values and Universal Values" so that you are reminded in the table of contents at the very top, but that sounds a little weird.

Eric, you're looking at an old working draft. Haven't checked all 
recent drafts for any missing inherit values but the recent drafts can 
be found here.

http://dev.w3.org/csswg/


CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 - Editor's Draft 27 October 
2010,

http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-background/

has inherited for all properties as I can see.



-- 
Alan http://css-class.com/

Armies Cannot Stop An Idea Whose Time Has Come. - Victor Hugo

Received on Friday, 29 October 2010 22:09:19 UTC