Re: Case Sensitivity in CSS [I18N-ACTION-171]

On Jan 15, 2013, at 8:59 , "Phillips, Addison" <addison@lab126.com> wrote:

> Hello CSS,
> 
> In our most recent teleconference [1], I was tasked [2] with conveying the Internationalization working group's comments to CSS.
> 
> I18N has considered our long thread of conversation, various tests produced by John Daggett, Richard Ishida, and myself, and other comments and has these recommendations as a result.
> 
> Case Sensitive comparison: Case sensitive comparison is the best choice for existing case-sensitive items and for any new features added to CSS. It's the easiest for content authors to understand and manage,

I think that's a sweeping claim. Prof. Feynman did an experiment once that revealed that some people have 'visual' memory and imagination of words, numbers etc.; for them, remembering case variation is easy.  Others memorize and imagine aurally; for them, case difference is a total pain.

Case sensitivity also leads to subtle bugs when, for example, in camelcase someone forgets one capital, and accidentally ends up with two, rather than one, of whatever it is. This is particularly a problem in languages where simply using a name establishes it, and no formal single declaration is needed (if it were, the mis-typed name would be flagged as undeclared).

(I am not suggesting that CSS be changed in any way, mind you, just to respect these issues when making decisions.)

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2013 17:51:24 UTC