Re: [css3-fonts] @font-feature-values editorial

Sylvain Galineau wrote:

> >> Fwiw I doubt web developers will distinguish the two. (Most I've
> >> met think of @font-face descriptors as properties and describe
> >> them that way, fwiw)
> >
> >This sort of misconception is part of what motivates me to *not*
> >want to call these @-rules.  Descriptors (or "properties") in
> >@-rules are easily misconstrued with "normal" style properties. 
> >The names of these descriptors are predefined and they can be used
> >case insensitively (margin-top is the same as MARGIN-TOP).  Neither
> >is true for feature value definitions which are a simple set of
> >user-defined named value pairs with limited scope.
> >
> >My goal is simply to try to make the wording distinct and avoid
> >equating them with other more general terms that follow a slightly
> >different pattern, such as @-rule descriptor names.  I'm fine with
> >whatever wording others think is needed to make the syntax handling
> >rules match but I think it's important to use different wording to
> >describe these.
> 
> That sounds fine generally speaking though I'm still not groking
> what this really means for implementations and web authors. Are you
> suggesting browsers parse these differently than @-rules? That'd be
> rather confusing for authors who run into different parsing failures
> for things behind a @ sign. 

The parsing is the same but the semantics are different. User-defined
identifiers rather than descriptors.  I just don't want a lot of
ambiguity in specs when someone adds some all-encompassing rule about
"descriptors".  There's a pattern in the group to try and
over-generalize things that leads to confusion in places where
differences exist.  I'm simply trying to distinguish these value
definitions from the general pattern.

> Or are they parsed like @-rules but you don't want a regular @-rule
> OM for them?

*smile* I'm afraid there really isn't much consistency in @-rule OM API's.
But that's not my concern at all (especially since these basically aren't
used much!).

> As for web authors, however harmful the misconception is, I'm not
> sure how spec wording alone fixes it.

Yeah, maybe, but I think it's important to make an effort to
distinguish the concepts behind this rule from more general patterns
of @-rules.

Cheers,

John Daggett

Received on Thursday, 6 June 2013 01:20:26 UTC