Re: [selectors4][css-syntax] Pseudo-elements vs. combinators

On 2/4/14, 9:46 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Sylvain Galineau <galineau@adobe.com>
>wrote:
>> A recurring debate in the WG - both last week in Seattle and at
>>previous meetings - pitted new combinators vs. pseudo-elements. The
>>former are generally deemed too cryptic as well as unsustainable: there
>>are only so many non-alphanumeric characters left on our keyboard, yet
>>enough of them that adding more just makes things more confusing. As a
>>result, I have heard a few times: "We should stop adding combinators and
>>use pseudo-elements instead".
>>
>> That seems a little odd to me, as it means hacking the pseudo-element
>>syntax for the purpose of describing things that aren't really
>>pseudo-elements i.e. it feels like solving one problem by creating
>>another different one. While one or two combinator characters may be
>>hard to read or remember, what comes after a combinator is generally
>>well-understood and unconstrained by pseudo-element syntax. It also
>>deals with the concern that having things that look like pseudo-elements
>>but aren't is just moving confusion around.
>>
>> One suggestion would be to allow future combinators to be mnemonics or
>>even words; we'd presumably need to agree on a common prefix for them to
>>disambiguate them for elements.
>>
>> So just like
>>
>> ::<name> indicates a pseudo-element,
>> :<name> indicates a pseudo-class,
>>
>> we'd have
>>
>> <combinator-prefix><name> indicate a combinator.
>>
>> The bikeshedding, of course, resides in choosing <combinator-prefix>.
>>But before even getting there, I was wondering what'd be daft about this?
>
>I agree that pseudo-elements are a weird syntax for this.  The way
>they're used today, it's the :: that's the "combinator", and it
>selects into the "pseudo-tree", where the <before>, <after>, etc
>elements live.  Except that the syntax isn't quite consistent with the
>other combinators, because of the weird syntax requirements.
>
>How about using ^?

I was just about to suggest that. So this could result in ^shadow and
^shadow-all combinators in the other thread, and possibly some
more-searchable retronyms for existing combinators like ^child, ^next and
^following?

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 2014 05:56:48 UTC