Re: [css3-ui] file formats for the cursor property

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 8:18 PM, Patrick Dark
<www-style.at.w3.org@patrick.dark.name> wrote:
> On 3/12/2015 12:39 PM, Florian
 wrote:
>>
>> In addition to a predefined list of values, the cursor property allows
>> authors to provide the cursor as an external file, indicated by the url()
>> function.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the spec makes no mention of which file format must or
>> should be supported. It would be nice for authors to be able to depend on
>> something, and for test writing, having no format mandated makes things
>> tricky.
>
>
> I don't think it's a good idea to mandate image formats for the cursor
> property (at least not for level 3); it should be fine for implementors to
> effect only the cursor property's keywords. Otherwise, you're saying that
> anyone that wants to implement only the keywords isn't spec-compliant.

This is exactly why we have left cursor file formats unspecified and
not required. The situation has not changed since we discussed it
years ago.

Multiple implementations implementing a cursor file format is
*insufficient* to making such a format a must (or even a should).

For any such format we'd like to suggest, even as a should, we need
* an open spec we can normatively reference.

We don't have that, and we should not make CSS3-UI exiting CR dependent on that.

We can still use them for tests to show *a* way that implementations
interop, and thus show that the feature is *possible* to interoperably
implement, without making implementations non-compliant because of
choice of specific file format.

As far as what authors can depend on in terms of external formats,
that's more tutorial material than spec material.

This not a new issue (in general), HTML5 has (had?) the same issue
with <video> and <audio>.

We can start the process of asking for such specs (e.g. in a wishlist
for CSS4-UI), in the hopes that a future level of CSS-UI may be able
to normatively reference them.

Thanks,

Tantek

Received on Monday, 16 March 2015 08:41:00 UTC