RE: @import -- allow at any place in stylesheet.

[Marat Tanalin:]
> 
> 18.01.2012, 03:59, "Sylvain Galineau" <sylvaing@microsoft.com>:
> > [Marat Tanalin:]
> >
> >>  17.01.2012, 12:18, "David Woolley" <forums@david-woolley.me.uk>:
> >>>  Marat Tanalin | tanalin.com wrote:
> >>>>   Hello. It makes sense to allow @import at any place in CSS
> stylesheet.
> >>>  Regardless of any reasons for the original decision, this sort of
> >>>  change is extremely likely to produce style sheets that do not
> >>> degrade
> >>>  gracefully on older browsers (some of which may be fixed in
> >>> silicon),
> >>>  so it would not be safe to use on the public internet for about a
> >>>  decade after introduction.
> >>>
> >>>  --
> >>>  David Woolley
> >>>  Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
> >>>  RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of
> >>> spam,
> >>>  that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
> >>  This is obvious, and such comments are completely useless here.
> >
> > No, this is not a 'useless' comment. CSS must allow older parsers to
> > ignore old features in such a way that you can add new features in
> > your existing stylesheet without breaking your site in older browsers.
> > So no, we do not have the luxury of ignoring the past and doing
> > whatever we want to the syntax.
> 
> @import between and after rules is successfully ignored by all browsers
> including even IE6, and rest part of stylesheet is successfully parsed and
> applied. So your current note is apparently purely theoretical (though
> generally somewhat reasonable).

You made a general comment about a type of comment being 'useless' and implied
that the design of future features should not care about existing browsers. The
latter is absolutely untrue and not at all theoretical. That was the context of my 
response.

As for @import specifically, error recovery should be able to deal with it. That
is probably the least important issue in enabling this, however, as explained
elsewhere.

> 
> > Note that using a frequently dismissive tone in comments is both
> > unnecessary and unwarranted. Based on the evidence you have provided
> > thus far the vast majority of contributors on this mailing list know *at
> least* as much as you do.
> > Asking questions to clarify why others think differently will be far
> > more helpful to you and everyone else than calling their feedback
> 'useless'. Thanks.
> 
> If something is obvious, repeating it is just information noise, and
> therefore useless -- regardless of why has someone said this. No
> dismissive tone, just clarification. Would it be better to just ignore
> such useless comments? -- I'm not sure it would.

The comment you responsed to was not useless. And the meaning of your 
communication is up to its recipients: they get to decide whether
you sound dismissive or not. Overall, your response was unwarranted,
unnecessary and added no value. It was the useless comment on this part 
of the thread.

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 16:04:04 UTC