[whatwg] The src-N proposal

[Marcos Caceres]

On Sunday, November 17, 2013 at 8:07 PM, whatwg-request at lists.whatwg.org wrote:

> Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 08:19:00 -0800
> From: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage at gmail.com (mailto:jackalmage at gmail.com)>
> To: Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at apple.com (mailto:rniwa at apple.com)>
> Cc: whatwg <whatwg at whatwg.org (mailto:whatwg at whatwg.org)>, Timothy Hatcher <timothy at apple.com (mailto:timothy at apple.com)>
> Subject: Re: [whatwg] The src-N proposal
> Message-ID:
> <CAAWBYDB34Wh6fLCBodozKOABGLrib53A=B2-0Yv=BCd0qgecbA at mail.gmail.com (mailto:BCd0qgecbA at mail.gmail.com)>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>  
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 5:16 AM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at apple.com (mailto:rniwa at apple.com)> wrote:
> > Without starting a debate on what semantics or aesthetics mean, syntax is a big deal. A bad syntax can totally kill a feature.
>  
>  
>  
> Believe me, I agree; I named my last coding project "Bikeshed", after all. ^_^
>  
> This is why I find it puzzling that a syntax accepted by the RICG and
> a lot of authors is being shot down by a few implementors. This is
> why I've been classifying the objections as "personal aesthetic
> concerns" - I don't know how to classify them otherwise. The proposed
> syntax doesn't seem to offend average authors, who grasp it well
> enough (it's a pretty simple translation from what they already liked
> in <picture>). It just offends a few of you from WebKit, some of whom
> have been a bit hyperbolic in expressing their dislike.


Agree. It would be ideal to try to find a way forward here with src-n.  

Mozilla is not really interested in restarting this whole effort again with <imgset> or new CSS-in-the-head proposals (though, of course, orthogonal improvements to the preload scanner are quite interesting and probably quite beneficial, but let’s keep that as separate!). We’ve already seen all the proposals for using CSS, JavaScript, and so on for the last 3 years (ad nauseam!), so can we please try to keep the discussion focused on src-n, picture, and, if we really need to, srcset. The developer community already made significant sacrifices in compromising on picture because of issues that implementers raised about nested elements (even if the RICG felt picture was a more useable solution, they were willing to drop it in favor of src-n to appease implementers and to end the stalemate for the good of actually getting something reasonable implemented).     

As we’ve already indicated, Mozilla are strongly behind src-n as we feel it best meets the use cases, and has the broadest developers support. Aesthetic concerns would seem to be very low on the priority of constituencies. Let’s not further erode those principles for the sake of markup aesthetics.  

So, I kindly ask that we seek to find a way forward with src-n.  

Kind regards,
Marcos  

--  
Marcos Caceres