Re: [css-values] Deprecating the 3-value <position> form

> On Oct 9, 2013, at 9:51 AM, "fantasai" <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 10/08/2013 09:38 PM, Dirk Schulze wrote:
>> 
>>> On Oct 9, 2013, at 2:35 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> The 3-value position form (which allows things like "left 20px 50px"
>>> as an equivalent to "left 20px top 50px") is barely used, but
>>> extremely confusing, and makes it very difficult to use <position>
>>> alongside anything else - it's too often grammatically ambiguous.
>>> 
>>> There seems to be at least moderate agreement that this form is a
>>> mistake (at least, between me, fantasai, Alan, and Dirk).  Would
>>> anyone mind if we deprecated it, making it a quirk of
>>> background-position, and just define <position> to only have the 1/2/4
>>> value clauses?
>> 
>> I would go one step further and say that 4 arguments are not the way
>> to go in the future (but can not be undone in backgrounds and borders
>> and therefore CSS Masking). W have calc() for things like that and I
>> think we should not encourage the usage of <position> in any other
>> spec than these two.
> 
> I strongly disagree with this statement for two reasons:
>   1. Calc(100% - x) is imho rather more awkward than having an explicit
>      syntax defining which corner to offset from. (I know some others
>      feel the opposite: the difference seems to be related to the level
>      of comfort with math and programming.)
>   2. It cannot expand to handle logical coordinates, which i18n has
>      been requesting for quite some time now.
> 
> #2 is not an aesthetic preference. It is a functional limitation of
> approaching this problem with calc().

I wonder why calc couldn't be extended to support positional keywords that don't mean something different than percentage values. Just with the exception that they are bound to a vertical or horizontal side.

Greetings
Dirk

> 
> ~fantasai
>

Received on Wednesday, 9 October 2013 08:16:29 UTC