[whatwg] return lowercase hex values for fillStyle and strokeStyle
Nicholas Shanks
contact at nickshanks.com
Tue Sep 5 10:07:35 PDT 2006
On 5 Sep 2006, at 12:54, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>>> Instead of returning an uppercase six digit hex value I suggest
>>> returning a lowercase value for compatibility with what UAs
>>> (including IE) currently do
>>
>> It may be the right decision on compatibility grounds, but other
>> than that lowercase hexadecimal digits (0-9, a-f) are almost
>> always a bad choice, because a, c and e have no ascenders like
>> every hindu-arabic decimal digit has and thus make the number
>> harder to read. This obviously does not apply to fonts with old-
>> style numerals aka. text figures, where 0, 1 and 2 have neither
>> ascenders (like 6 and 8) nor descenders (like 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9),
>> but those are rather unlikely to be used in a programming
>> environment.
>
> I believe this, but I suspect that the gain in compatibility is
> well worth the minor loss in efficiency for people who are hand-
> coding.
I disagree, and always prefer uppercase hex digits to lowercase ones,
it makes the numbers easier to read IMO.
- Nicholas.
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