Re: marker-pattern syntax

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:20 PM, Cameron McCormack <cam@mcc.id.au> wrote:
> Dirk Schulze:
>> This would not be a good idea, and we just can support one repeat. But why
>> should authors just differ with different markers at the beginning and the
>> end of the path? Why shouldn't they want to have special value in the middle
>> and everything around repeats? This gets ridiculous complicated. Let us
>> concentrate on basic functionality. Something that you would expect from a
>> pattern: it repeats.
>
>
> If all we want is repeating then I would say do away with the initial
> offset.  As I said, if we include an initial (non-repeated) offset, then we
> should allow one at the end as well.  The use for this is to ensure repeated
> markers in the middle don't run up against the ends of the path, right?  (It
> might be you have marker-{start,end} markers there you don't want to run in
> to.)  In which case it's just as likely you'll need to do this at the other
> end of the path.
>
> Of course this is all about balancing power and complexity for the author.
> I am happy with not having arbitrary non-repeating patterns at the start/end
> of the path; you can do that with separate tracks (as long as you don't mind
> that they'll be all painted above or below the repeated ones).

Yes, I'm also fine with just doing an initial/final offset for now,
and leaving the actual marker placement to the repeat pattern.
There's room for expansion if we need it in the future.

> But I don't like the omitted url()s -- I would rather it be explicit by
> including them.

If we want *some* kind of indicator there, so it's not just
consecutive lengths, that's fine.  But I don't like repeated url()s,
because the values can be long sometimes, and in longish repeat
patterns, you'll often have the same url() over and over again.  That
just seems wasteful.

But something like a "same" keyword would be fine.

> My issue about the initial offset (and final offset as above in Tab's
> example) still stands: to me it looks very much like it's part of the
> repeating pattern, and in the first of the two examples above I would have
> to think hard about whether the 50px at the end is an offset or if it is
> part of the repeating pattern.  I think the repeat() syntax helps make that
> distinction clear.

Agreed.  I can't think of a way to make the final offset look
reasonable without an explicit wrapper around the repeated part, like
a repeat() function.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 07:53:15 UTC