Re: [css-counter-styles] discontiguous ranges

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Peter Moulder <peter.moulder@monash.edu> wrote:
> Considering that:
>
>   - of the ~140 counter styles given both normatively (in previous
>     versions of css-counter-styles) and in the examples, not one uses the option of
>     multiple ranges;
>
>   - multiple ranges don't add to the expressive power: one can accomplish the same
>     with fallback and override (admittedly with less readability);
>
>   - multiple ranges have a cost in testing and implementation (complexity of representation
>     and accessing that data structure, and corresponding parsing and its error handling);
>
>   - the current text of http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-lists/ only gives a single range;
>
> I think it reasonable not to implement multiple ranges, and I suggest removing
> the option of multiple ranges from the spec.

Multiple ranges makes it possible to implement certain types of things
(mainly, complex additive styles) much more compactly.  It's certainly
possible to do it with just multiple @counter-styles and fallbacks,
but it's *really* verbose.

The reason there's nothing in the spec with multiple ranges is because
the one example I had (the limited-range chinese styles) were still
ugly enough that it was preferable to do it as a specialized
algorithm. ^_^

However, I agree that multiple ranges are of low benefit.

Other people in the WG who care about this: thoughts?

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 20 February 2013 23:13:18 UTC