Re: [css-variables] the new ED for CSS Variables

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 3:26 PM, Arron Eicholz
<Arron.Eicholz@microsoft.com> wrote:
> On Friday, February 17, 2012 2:43 PM Chris Eppstein wrote:
>>Variables are a new primitive. Seems justified.
>
> Altering the core grammar takes a great deal of investigation. An alteration to the core grammar requires us to analyze all 400+ existing, proposed and suggested properties, including SVG properties, (there are actually 606 by my last count, but who is keeping track). We must determine if any of them have to be updated, altered or changed to account for this new primitive. Don't forget to multiply all the values that all those properties take and how they will be affected. This is an extensive amount of work and who knows what we might miss when looking at all the values that those properties take.
>
> Now take into account the OM and Javascript side of things and even how frameworks interact. Will a '$' interfere or makes things confusing? My guess is it will, at the very least it will make things confusing. It also wouldn't shock me if it broke a Javascript library somewhere.
>
> In the end the cost is very high for changing the core grammar. Going with 'data-' or 'var-' really doesn't have much impact in this regard and would be the best solution to move things quickly.
>

Is "move things quickly" really the priority? It seems like "have the
most intuitive syntax" would be a more important goal. Of course,
"don't break the web" is probably a more important goal still :)

FWIW, if we were to keep the currently proposed notation (more or
less), "var-" seems better than "data-" to me; I too see the potential
confusion between this and data- attributes in HTML, and data- doesn't
scream "variable" or "value" to me.

-- Dirk

Received on Friday, 17 February 2012 23:45:43 UTC