Re: [css3-flexbox] Typos in updated flexbox spec

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com> wrote:
> ‘flex-align’ values were before|after|middle|stretch|baseline, which
> apparently changed recently to start|end|center|baseline|stretch.
>
> I don’t see any discussion or resolution to rename values, and I though we
> agreed earlier that it makes sense to match vertical-align values. What
> happened here?

I tried to make all the properties consistent.  I think it's better to
settle on either start/end/center or before/after/middle for
everything, than to try and decide whether a particular property is
"more like 'text-align'" or "more like 'vertical-align'".  Between the
two sets of terms, I prefer using start/end/center in a generic
manner.  They seem to flow better - "the start edge" sounds betters
than "the before edge".

For example, flex-line-pack is basically identical to flex-pack in
functionality (both align multiple items in an axis), but it's in the
same axis as flex-align.  Do you use before/after because it's in the
same axis as flex-align (thus making it confusing that the values are
different from flex-pack), or do you use start/end because it has the
same functionality as flex-pack (thus making it confusing that you
have to say "flex-align:before; flex-line-pack:start;" to put things
at the start edge).

Plus, the Grid spec uses start/end/center for both of its alignment
properties.  Consistency is good.  (I agree with its usage, too - it
would be horrible if one property used start/end/center and the other
used before/after/middle.)

(If we wanted to be really exact, the values would be main-start,
cross-end, etc., like I refer to them in the spec.  But that seemed
silly.)

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 8 September 2011 00:08:15 UTC