- From: Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com>
- Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 17:31:00 +0000
- To: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- CC: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
[David Singer:] > On May 5, 2011, at 16:50 , Dean Jackson wrote: > > > > > On 03/05/2011, at 8:42 AM, Sylvain Galineau wrote: > > > >> > >> [Simon Fraser:] > >>> On May 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote: > >>> > >>>> I also brought this up [1] and it seems Gradients assume zero > >>>> angles require a unit. > >>>> > >>>> Given the precedent, I agree it would be more author-friendly if > >>>> zero was allowed to have no unit everywhere. But even as someone > >>>> who doesn't write CSS parsers for a living, I am not sure the > >>>> convenience is worth the bug-prone ambiguity or more complex value > >>>> syntax that can result. On balance, making length the exception - > >>>> on historical grounds and because it is the most-used value type - > >>>> does not seem unreasonable. But it does feel icky. > >>> > >>> I'm strongly in favor of unitless zero everywhere. As an author, I > >>> wouldn't be able to remember where I need units and where I do not > >>> if the rules differ for different values. > >> > >> Same everywhere is ideal. Or a single exception such as "not required > >> for lengths but needed everywhere else". I'd be OK with either. Any > >> more complicated is a fail imo. > > > > Count me in with Simon and Eric. The majority of CSS developers are > going to expect 0 means 0 everywhere, and that you don't need to worry > about units. > > > From a metrics point of view, I have a hard time thinking of a case where > 0<unit> means something different from 0 (with the units implied). From an > authoring point of view, I agree that most would expect 0 to be clear as > meaning, well, none of whatever is expected here. > > > However, are we sure that there are no cases in the grammar where you > understand something was left out, or not, based on its data type? That > is, say you have > > something optional-angle optional-length > > and the default values are not zero. then something 0 could be setting > the angle to zero and leaving the length at default, or vice versa. > > Are we sure that there are no parsing-depends-on-units-implying-type > places in CSS? > > > David Singer > Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc. Not sure this is what you're looking for but gradients need angles to have a unit for all values including 0. See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2009Nov/0043.html.
Received on Friday, 6 May 2011 17:31:30 UTC