Re: [css3-fonts] FontLoader v2

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 12:12 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:47 PM, Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> wrote:
> > What you appear to find obvious, I find irrational. Your suggestion has
> the
> > following negatives:
> >
> > * increases cognitive load on author, since there are two ways of
> accessing
> > similar/identical information
>
> Huh?  There's not two ways.  There's only one - through the event.
> Whether they hang off the event or "event.fontface.style" has no
> effect on "cognitive load".
>
> Unless you're trying to say that authors will somehow be confused by
> the fact that you can access font information both in an event *and*
> off of the CSSOM object.  I'm not going to take this possibility
> seriously.
>

Well, I do.


> > * increases effort on UA implementors, both in coding and testing
> > * increases UA code footprint unnecessarily
>
> These are insignificant, and author needs trump UA needs in the
> prioritizing of constituencies.  (Strong problems for the UA can trump
> minor problems for the author, but if they're roughly equal, authors
> win.)
>

I don't agree. Further, you haven't proven that the case in question here
is even relevant to 1 author out of 100. You are asking me and other
readers to simply accept your assertion on faith that this is a relevant
hurdle for authors and that defining two ways of doing two things makes
life substantially easier for authors, and that this increase in ease
overcomes the increase in pain on the part of implementers, tool authors,
test writers, spec writers, etc. Feel free to back up your claim with
numbers and perhaps I'll reconsider.


> > Need I continue? And what does one get from this? The ability to tell the
> > author that, for a functionality they don't yet have, they need type nine
> > fewer characters??? No thanks. I don't want to increase the already high
> > level of 'perl'-entropy present in these specs. Are you a doppelgänger of
> > Larry Wall? ;)
>
> It's 15 fewer characters, actually.  I, um, don't know what to say if
> you think "event.weight" over "event.fontface.style.weight" in a
> FontFaceEvent is "perl-level entropy".  I literally don't know what
> answer to give in response to that.
>

It (perl entropy) is a metaphor for specifying a different way
(syntactically) do the same thing (in this case access font face
descriptors) every time you do it. You are suggesting two different
interfaces for accessing font face descriptors when one will do. I don't
care if it is the existing CSSStyleDeclaration interface or something new
we choose, but I don't want to see two interfaces populated with the same
or very similar members.