Re: [css-counter-styles] status of "additional" predefined counter styles

On 8/9/14 23:46, Xidorn Quan wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 1:36 AM, Jonathan Kew <jfkthame@gmail.com
> <mailto:jfkthame@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     In the current CSS Counter Styles draft,[1] we read that
>
>     # These additional counter styles are not intended to be supported by
>     # user-agents by default
>
>     (in reference to the styles listed in the i18n WG's document.[2])
>
>     However, test results[3] indicate that webkit and blink do actually
>     implement a number of these as built-in counter styles; in
>     particular, many of the Indian script/language names (with the
>     exception of 'tamil'), and several more such as 'arabic-indic',
>     'persian', etc.
>
>
> My understanding is that the phrase "not intended" indicates MAY, not a
> requirement, prohibition, or recommendation. Therefore, I think UAs can
> implement some or none of them as built-ins if they want. Anyway, I
> think it makes sense to make the wording here more clear. In my opinion,
> it should be either a SHOULD NOT, or a MAY.

The trouble with letting them be "optional built-ins" is that authors 
using a UA that includes them are very unlikely to realize that for 
interoperability, they still need to include the corresponding 
@counter-style rule in their own stylesheet. Hence, non-interoperability.

>
>     A smaller number of the "additional" styles are also supported by
>     Firefox, such as 'armenian', 'greek', and a number of CJK styles;
>     and a handful also by IE.
>
> The styles you listed supported by Firefox are actually parts of the
> spec.

So they are, yes.

> Predefined Counter Styles
> includes all the styles defined in the spec.

Indeed. Confusingly, the Predefined Counter Styles document claims that 
"The definitions of those styles are also included here, and identified 
as such by a comment" (see [1]), but it turns out that only a few of 
them actually have such a comment.

So a reader of Predefined Counter Styles has no easy way of knowing 
which of the styles are required by CSS Counter Styles to be predefined 
by the UA, and which truly are "additional" definitions to be copied as 
needed.

cc'ing www-international@w3.org re the inconsistent identification of 
standard counter styles.

JK

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/predefined-counter-styles/#howto

Received on Monday, 8 September 2014 23:10:17 UTC