I'd just like to reiterate that we are open to making well-justified changes to the API shape over the next few months, as concerns arise. I think that the fact that we're shipping this API makes us *more* (not less) likely to *a)* surface the need for these changes, and *b)* prioritize them appropriately.
Thanks, Mason On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 7:03 PM Florian Rivoal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 2024/05/03 5:43, Mason Freed wrote: > > I stand by what I said - we will definitely be open to well-justified > > changes after we ship! More inline below. > > Despite the best intents, the "well-justified" part of this is going to > be a very quickly raising bar. > > The same intent was declared [1] about 'text-wrap: balance' not long > ago, and shortly after it shipped we wanted to tweak it, and Chrome > pushed back [2] because of compat concerns. > > The people who said then that shipping prior to spec stability was OK > because making compat breaking changes would be fine if needed were > sincere. But those who insisted that breaking compat was not worth it > when we did find things we wanted to change were being reasonable. > > 'text-wrap: balance' was a very simple feature, with low complexity, and > limited impact in terms of potential for breakage. And yet we ended up > being more constrained than we wished. Anchor positioning is way more > complex of a feature, so the likelihood we'll discover something we want > to change is higher, and the impact of potential breakage is higher too, > since this is a layout feature. > > At the point where a number of sites will have started relying on this > highly anticipated feature, making breaking changes will be pushed back > against, with good reasons. > > [1] > https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/9102#issuecomment-1649927288 > [2] > https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/9102#issuecomment-1658998792 > > On 2024/05/03 5:43, Mason Freed wrote: > > Again, we’ve been working through the nuances of this feature for more > > than 2 years, and this is hardly the first (or second or third) draft. > > I think the core feature is quite stable. > > For a layout spec, 2 years is not especially long. > > Moreover, for about half of those 2 years, few people in the working > group were fully engaged. That's unfortunate, but people's priorities > cannot always shift quickly, even if they're interested. Fortunately, > there's now been significant engagement, but that's still recent. Here's > some imperfect but but illustrative evidence: out of 67 closed issues in > GitHub, 8 were closed prior to May last year [3], while 59 were closed > since then [4]. 47 of them were even closed in the last 3 months [5]. > That's absolutely evidence of good progress and engagement, but I > wouldn't call that stability just yet. > > [3] > > https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3Acss-anchor-position-1+is%3Aclosed+closed%3A%3C2023-05-01+ > [4] > > https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3Acss-anchor-position-1+is%3Aclosed+closed%3A%3E2023-05-01+ > [5] > > https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3Acss-anchor-position-1+is%3Aclosed+closed%3A%3E2024-02-03 > > > Now, the core concepts of the spec do seem stable at this point. But > changes don't need to be to core concepts to be breaking. > > All in all, I support fantasai's position: an updated implementation in > experimental features / beta builds, as well as giving the revised spec > enough time to gather feedback from accessibility reviews and other > horizontal groups like the TAG, from web developers after Tab presents > at CSS-day and from beta builds, and from the WG itself now that the > spec has been updated, seems appropriate. > > If the request was to wait for as many years as it took to ship Grid or > Writing Modes, I would understand (and agree with) the desire to ship > faster than that. But here I think we're only talking about a few more > months, and for a feature of this magnitude, that seems worth it to > ensure we don't lock ourselves into a few unfortunate shortcomings that > could permanently limit its potential. > > —Florian > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "blink-dev" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink-dev/jGTYNuidPRs/unsubscribe > . > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/bad5411e-814f-478a-9071-971cce1d3232%40rivoal.net > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAM%3DNeDh773J9Oa68qUwONC2%3DKJ6_EBBTJ0h_C4tEf3Xz1mgDgg%40mail.gmail.com.
