[css3-images] Fwd: CSS Gradient Notation

Forwarding a comment on css3-images...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CSS Gradient Notation
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:37:52 -0800
From: Robert Biggs <rbiggs@ymail.com>

Hi,

I was checking out the latest document http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-images to check up on the status of CSS gradients. I have 
to say I was shocked and dismayed to see that you're proposition the requirement for prepositions to be used with the 
positional keywords. I was scratching my head for quite some time. Is that to make it clearer to English speakers what the 
keywords do? Requiring English preposition will not make it clearer to people who don't speak English. If you want to make it 
more grammatical English, you should include the indefinite article, e.g. "to the bottom left". Or maybe an adverb or a 
gerund: "flowing towards the bottom right". And for radial gradients: "positioned at the closest side". And while you're at 
it, you could get rid of the hyphens in the radial keywords.

I'm being facetious. When the Webkit guys first presented CSS gradients, the Mozilla people complained about the notation 
being too complicated and came up with a simpler notation. I'm sure you laughed at being required to write from(color), 
to(color). Funny how you're now suggesting that we have to use prepositions ("to" and "at") with keywords. Don't hobble CSS 
with English grammatical requirements. No body needs an understanding of English grammar to write HTML or JavaScript or CSS, 
until now.

By the way, in Spanish, the word for "to" is "a" and the word for at is "a". Spanish speakers will not see your prepositions 
as a clarification of anything.

Cheers

Received on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 01:16:56 UTC