Re: [css3-gcpm] Printing backgrounds (thread reboot)

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:
> From my perspective (and given my print publishing background) I agree with
> Bert, so I've added some wiki text to the Do Nothing solution. I think a
> print preview UI is preferable to anything we've discussed so far.
>
> My read of the wiki is that solutions 2-6 are too polluted, and the
> preferred solution 7 is subject to future pollution, so it isn't any better
> aside from being new. When the new thing gets added to boilerplate and stops
> being the "I've thought of print" flag will we go through this again?

This isn't quite an accurate reading.  Solutions 2-5 are too polluted
to use as a signal, yes, *but they weren't intended as a signal in the
first place*.  The letter-spacing property is also too polluted to use
as a signal of intent here.

Solution 7 proposes an explicit signal of intent, without any
pre-existing functionality or meaning to interfere.

It's still possible for a new property to become polluted, yes.  At
that point we'll be sure that we can't trust authors, and we'll
deprecate the property and likely have to switch back to some
combination of UI and heuristics.  But nothing so far has indicated
that this will happen.


> Despite its limitations, we already have media="print". It may be a polluted
> signal or an intentionally malicious one, but it does appear sufficient to
> express author intent. In the end it should up to the UI to present to the
> user a way of determining whether that stylesheet is reasonable and meets
> their printing needs.

Yes, in the end it is.  As expressed on the wiki page, none of the
solutions are anything more than a hint to the UA.  Hints can be
useful for helping the UA present a good UI for the user.

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 18 August 2011 21:43:18 UTC