RE: DR 09-0295 — WML: gridCols measurement units

[Chris Rae]

I'd like to have a discussion about this on the next call, if we can. I do see some benefit to having measurement units mandatory, but I also think that Rick's complaint that Murata-san mentioned ("that we shouldn't force programmers  to remember different measurement units for different places but allow them to explicitly specify their favorite measurement units") is already satisfied in the current standard.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Jirka Kosek [mailto:jirka at kosek.cz] 
Sent: 05 September 2010 23:33
To: Chris Rae
Cc: e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org
Subject: Re: DR 09-0295 — WML: gridCols measurement units 

Chris Rae wrote:

> This DR covers the fact that measurements units (a feature added to 
> several elements at the BRM) are optional on the elements to which 
> they apply, and requests that they are made mandatory. There's a core 
> assumption that it was the intent of the BRM to make these attributes 
> mandatory - I've done as much research as I could and as far as I can 
> see the BRM voted on a proposal (written up by Tristan and Rex) which 
> incorporated optional attributes but maintained the existing Ecma-376 
> measuring system as a default, if no units were specified. This is how 
> the standard is written at the moment.

I think that it was me who proposed text, but that's not important.
Czech was main force behind this change and idea was to make units optional in Transitional in order to retain compatibility with ECMA 363 1st edition. However in Strict units should be mandatory.

> Aside from the BRM debate, I'm not in favour of taking the 
> modifications proposed this DR. There seems to be no inherent 
> disadvantage to having default units for particular measurements, and 
> I think it makes the migration path from transitional to strict 
> implementations harder for no obvious technical benefit.

The trouble is that there are several different default units in use for different elements/attributes. I think that this DR is correct in its essence.

				Jirka

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