[whatwg] number-related feedback
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Thu Aug 21 16:38:30 PDT 2008
On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Christoph Päper wrote:
> Ian Hickson (2008-03-23):
> > On Tue, 18 Mar 2008, Christoph Päper wrote:
> > > >
> > > > a <span>valid non-negative integer</span> greater than zero.
> > >
> > > Isn't that the description of a valid positive integer? If that term
> > > is not used or defined yet, why not?
> >
> > Because "positive" is confusing to people. Some people (including me)
> > think that 0 is positive.
>
> Sure, but I thought "non-negative integer" was used to make it clear
> that zero was included. Thus for the (fewer) instances like this one,
> where zero is excluded, "positive integer" becomes available. You only
> need to say this once in 3.2.3., which is linked each time any way, and
> thereby improve readability. You could of course adopt the other
> definition of 'positive' instead.
I hesitate to do this because while non-negative is clearly 0-or-higher,
positive is not as clear to everyone, and I expect I would introduce far
too many errors in the spec if I did it that way.
> > > Why can |rowspan|, unlike |colspan|, be 0, but is then also
> > > normalised to 1?
> >
> > It's not normalised to 1, is it? I don't understand.
>
> It is not, I misinterpreted this sentence:
>
> Its default value, which must be used if parsing the attribute as a
> non-negative integer returns an error, is also 1.
The default value is 1 because otherwise not including the attribute would
mean the cell filled the whole table each time.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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