Re: [css-syntax] Do not require digits after decimal point for number tokens

On 7/29/14, 12:42 PM, "Lea Verou" <lea@verou.me> wrote:

>On Jul 29, 2014, at 22:20, Lea Verou <lea@verou.me> wrote:
>
>> When the author is editing non integer lengths (e.g. from 2.5px to
>>2.9px), it usually goes like this (| denotes the caret):
>> 
>> 2.5px|
>> 2.5|px
>> 2.|px
>> 2.9|px
>> 
>> Instead of being able to observe the result of their changes, all they
>>see is a flash, since the 3rd step makes the value invalid, then it
>>jumps back to 2.9px. It sounds trivial, but it’s encountered so
>>frequently that it’s incredibly annoying.
>
>
>Actually, I just realized my example doesn't demonstrate what I meant.
>The numbers should have been 2px to 2.1px:
>
>2px|
>2|px
>2.|px
>2.1|px
>

It seems to me that this should be a fix in the tools that allow
live-editing of values. I think it would be bad to allow 2.px as a value
in a stylesheet. Just 2. by itself might be OK, but that’s not going far
enough to solve your use case.

As a tools fix, there could be additional affordances that might be
impossible to do in the grammar. If you have a value like 2px and you
place the cursor at the end and start deleting, a tool could take what it
knows of the previous state and allow 2p and 2 to be interpreted as 2px to
avoid flashes before you’ve unambiguously changed the value. The tools
display could show its assumptions in gray and commit the assumption when
you leave the control.

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Wednesday, 30 July 2014 17:52:51 UTC