Re: [css-cascade-4][css3-ui] naming collision: the "default" value

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 7:42 AM, Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> wrote:
> css-cascade-4 defines "default" as a value that is valid on every property.
> http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-cascade-4/#valdef-all-default
>
> css3-ui defines "default" as a value of the cursor property.
> http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-ui/#propdef-cursor
>
> If you write "cursor: default", which one do you get? Hopefully the cursor specific meaning, but If you wanted the other one, how do you get it?
>
> cursor: default has existed for many years, and every browser supports it, so I don't quite see how we could remove or rename it.
>
> Which leaves us with a few options:
> a - rename the global "default" into something else. "reset"?
>
> b - decide it will be impossible to use the global "default" in the cursor property
>
> c - create a special keyword ("css-default"? "global-default"? "reset"?) for the cursor property that gets you the behavior of the global default keyword.
>
> c seems very hacky and confusing, but it gets the job done.
>
> b is not so hacky, but still confusing, and it would be unfortunate to not have access the abilities of the global "default" keyword, especially for a property like cursor which is expected to be heavily used in the UA stylesheet.
>
> a is kind of clean, except that "default" is a good name, and that it's been a reserved keyword (for example in http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-values/#custom-idents) in case we wanted to introduce it, and alternative names have not been protected that way.
>
> All options seem bad to me (though not necessarily equally bad). Any better idea?

There seemed to be general agreement on the call that option A was the
least bad.  Here's some opening suggestions for names:

1. reset (already suggested by you, just putting it here for organization)
2. ua-default (suggested by zcorpan)
3. user-agent

I like ua-default.  It's even clearer than "default", and makes it
really obvious to people what it does.  It also seems to be
practically guaranteed to not already be used by authors in any
<custom-ident>s we have.  Its only downside is that it's not
technically correct - when used in an author-level sheet, it causes
the user stylesheet to be applied too - but I don't think that's a
complication that matters.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 22 April 2015 19:22:19 UTC