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

On Feb 17, 2012 7:27 PM, "Chris Eppstein" <chris@eppsteins.net> wrote:
>
> While that would be very good for my career, I think it would be bad for
developers and users alike. CSS preprocessors produce bloated output that
is difficult to debug.

Would moving it into CSS automatically make it easier to debug or is that
ultimately reliant on the tools you use?  The tools we have today know how
to understand css as it exists today right?  The reason, in my experience
that they are hard to debug is that there is no way to find out where in
the preprocessed source those values came from.  Whether this were moved
into the browser as a new thing or made a part of css, I think the tools
would require changing to give you that.  Also, the underpinnings of how
they are handled by the broswer would require fairly significant change. On
the other hand, a macro-like preprocess built into the browser could give
you all those things too without almost trivial cost by comparison.

> Sass has shown that with more syntactic features like mixins and selector
inheritance most of the presentation can move from the markup's classitis
into the stylesheet's definitions -- actually delivering on the promise of
a clean separation of markup and design. Unfortunately, the realities of
performance require that in many cases, you cannot build this way. It makes
me sad -- which is why I want to bring many of Sass's feature to CSS itself.
>
> Chris
>
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Feb 17, 2012 6:51 PM, "Chris Eppstein" <chris@eppsteins.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > I'd also like to keep a long view here with respect to other features
like mixins and user-defined functions. The current var-based syntax seems
very unnatural in those contexts.
>> >
>> > Chris
>> >
>> >
>> There are some excellent preprocessors out there... sass is great but it
is preprocessing what winds up being CSS. Sass itself is not CSS and
without some core changes it can't be.  This presents problems to more than
just browsers, it affects anyone who parses CSS.  IMO, Tab's draft feels so
different from those precisely because it is.  It fits CSS and while it
doesn't allow some things those preprocessors do, it enables other.
>>
>> Rather than worry about dramatic changes to CSS to support things that
actually ARE handled really well by a preprocessor already, why not just
keep it as a preprocessor?  I think its an easier case to make, even to
make the case that the browsers should adopt and natively support some
preprocessing of a new mime type that ultimates turns into CSS than it is
to change the core grammar.
>>
>> Maybe not, I could be wrong, just another way to look at it.
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Dirk Pranke <dpranke@chromium.org>
wrote:
>> >>
>> >> 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
>> >
>> >
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