[whatwg] The src-N proposal

[Bruno Racineux]

On 11/18/13 4:25 PM, "Qebui Nehebkau" <qebui.nehebkau at gmail.com> wrote:

>Many people seem to find regexps
>difficult to understand, and the regexps involved would only get more
>difficult as the complexity of URL patterns increases. Forcing authors
>to use them sounds like a great way to guarantee cargo-cult
>programming, where authors will just drop in a regexp they've seen
>before without any understanding of why it works the way it does or how
>to change it to suit their needs. This seems obviously undesirable.

If I can give two top of my head analogies. With that pattern of thinking,
something like the rather complex to understand CSS flexbox wouldn't
exist. Or inline javacript would be allowed for fear of a dumb mistake by
an amateur.

I think, this kind of false misdirected fears, are actually overemphasized
concerns by some here. If we worry about 'stupid' so much that it hinders
progress. It could set priorities backwards.

The responsive web with ajax, microdata and accessibility concerns is
complex enough that it's already no longer a thing for dummies.

I am worry that the given restrictions they have, is that it creates other
bigger problems everywhere else. Instead of accommodating the external
issues and requirements by adding a little complexity to the RespIMG
feature itself.

>Personally (and I'm not a browser implementor or anything), I think the
>ideal solution to the URL repetition problem would be the case where
>authors can supply multiple base URLs for the document, and the choice
>of base URL is made either contextually or according to some replaced
>token in the relative URL string. The replaced token case could
>potentially be backed up by server-side redirection, I guess. This
>would be much more generally useful and not require people to engage
>with excessively complex syntaxes or name their files according to a
>rigid pattern.

Perhaps, a reason I come to this conclusion, is that: An advantage with
the Worpdress img-name-{width}x{height}.jpg syntax is that you don't need
any tokens at all.  As long as the With and Height are declared inline,
you can figure out the ratio, and match that with the list of available
widths to get the right image.

Which makes src-N or srcset ever more so unnecessary for that particular
naming convention, that I'd rather almost have a few lines of inline
javascript do it in the head, for the Wordpress platform.