[css3-flexbox] comments on "Resolve flexible lengths"

Some comments on
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-flexbox/#resolve-flexible-lengths :

In step 5, "the sign choosing the flex ratio" is very confusing.  I
think it should explicitly point to step 1.  (It took me quite a
while to understand that that's what it meant; I initially assumed
it was extraneous wording that duplicated the distinction in the
bullet points following.)

I don't like the terminology "flex grow ratio" and "flex shrink
ratio", because they're not ratios -- they're weights or portions,
or in the case of flex-shrink, a number to be multiplied by a width
in order to get a weight or a portion.  I think it makes sense to
call the number computed during step 5 a "ratio", but I don't think
the numbers it's computed from should be called ratios.

I also think it would be better if what the flex-shrink and
flex-grow properties were described a little bit under the
definitions of those properties -- at least to the point of
explaining that flex-shrink is multiplied by width and flex-grow is
not, rather than only in the algorithm where authors reading the
spec are going to have more difficulty finding it.  (It also might
make more sense to have that definition along with the individual
properties rather than under the shorthand -- although in this case,
given that the shorthand is the preferred form, maybe it makes sense
as it is with the prose under the shorthand.)

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                           http://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂

Received on Saturday, 11 August 2012 22:52:49 UTC