Disposition of comments for Media Queries CR

This document is a proposed disposition of comments between the Media Queries 6 June 2007 CR and the Media Queries 23 April 2009 CR.

The following color coding convention is used for comments:

(There were no formal objections.)

Comment from fantasai Mon, 13 Aug 2007.
1

The poster suggested that it would be more useful to use the media *groups* defined in CSS2.1 [1]. E.g.

   @media paged { ... }
Too late for this version. We should reconsider this for Media Queries Level 4.
Comment from fantasai Tue, 21 Aug 2007.
2 Today we discussed how imprecision in device hardware results in display widths and heights that are not *exactly* in line with the nominal width and height. It was suggested that we should allow some fuzz factor in media query matching for this reason. No change.
Comment from fantasai Tue, 21 Aug 2007.
3
Proposed changes:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#device-aspect-ratio

   # In this specification, aspect ratio is defined as the number of
   # horizontal pixels over the number of vertical pixels.

   change to

   | In this specification, aspect ratio is defined as the horizontal
   | length of the device's display divided by its vertical length.


   http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#resolution

   # The 'resolution' media feature describes the resolution of the
   # output device, i.e. the density of the pixels.

   Add

   | When querying devices with non-square pixels, in 'min-resolution'
   | queries the least-dense dimension must be compared to the specified
   | value and in 'max-resolution' queries the most-dense dimensions must
   | be compared instead. A fixed 'resolution' query never matches a device
   | with non-square pixels.

   (Alternatively we could allow two values to query each dimension
   independently, but I don't think this is useful.)
Accepted.
Comment from Stewart Brodie Wed, 22 Aug 2007.
4
'not' and unknown media types:

Section 3 says: "The presence of the keyword 'not' at the beginning of the
query negates the results."  Section 4 says: "Media queries involving
unknown media types are always false".

When I read that, the word 'always' led me to wonder whether or not unknown
media types trump the section 3 definition of 'not'.  I suggest the
following clarifications:

1) remove the word "always" from the section 4 statement
2) Add an example showing that the following media query is true:

     @media not 3d-glasses { ... }
'not foo' is true and 'foo' is false. (3d-glasses is a parse error.)
Comment from Stewart Brodie Wed, 22 Aug 2007.
5 Does "color-index" have a zero value unless a lookup table is used? If the device does not use a color lookup table, the value is zero.
Comment from Andrew Fedoniouk Tue, 28 Aug 2007.
6

Is it possible to add in media queries [1] value that will indicate that UA is running with high-contrast-screen settings?

Too late for this version. We should reconsider this for Media Queries Level 4.
Comment from Ian Hickson 6 Nov 2007
7

it'd be nice if we defined the lack of a media query string to mean "all"

Yes.
Comment from Henri Sivonen 14 Nov 2007.
8

Parsing is not well defined in terms of whitespace and error handling.

This is now addressed by the syntax section.
Comment from Henri Sivonen 17 Nov 2007.
9

If a media feature does not match the media type is that an error?

No. Writing "speech and (width:100px)" is acceptable. The validator may issue a warning though.
Comment from Henri Sivonen 17 Nov 2007.
10

grid doesn't apply to all media

Fixed, thanks!
Comment from Anne van Kesteren 03 Dec 2007.
11

I think that the Media Queries draft http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-css3-mediaqueries-20070606/ should either define media types itself or should reference CSS 2.1 for them. Referencing HTML4 and CSS2 for these seems outdated. For instance, "aural" is deprecated in CSS 2.1, but "speech" is not. "speech" is not mentioned in Media Queries and "aural" is used in examples and mentioned several times.

Too late for this version. We should reconsider this for Media Queries Level 4.
Comment from Anne van Kesteren 10 Dec 2007.
12Syntax issues. Addressed. (Syntax is now described in terms of CSS 2.1 eliminating these issues.)
Comment from Anne van Kesteren 12 Dec 2007.
13Using the same syntax rules for HTML and CSS. Addressed by using Bert's syntax proposal.
Comment from Simon Proctor 19 Dec 2007
14 Introducing a 'supports()' querying feature. Too late for this version. We should reconsider this for Media Queries Level 4.
Comment from Anne van Kesteren Mon, 31 Mar 2008.
15I was wondering why a negative <length> for 'width' (and other media features) is not disallowed ... I hope a further revision of the specification could say that "<length> must be a positive integer when applied to a media feature specified in this specification." (Perhaps adding "or zero" to that for clarity if needed.) With my editor's hat on I went through all the features and clarified what type of "numbers" they could hold and whether those could be negative, zero, or just positive.
Comment from David Baron 06 Apr 2008
16 What does '(scan)' mean? The draft is clarified to mention that each media feature (including min/max prefixed) "(media-feature)" is equivalent to "(media-feature:x)" for when x is not equal to 0. (If media-feature does not accept 0 x can be any value.)
Comment from David Baron 07 Apr 2008
17 Bad examples for orientation. (Only value was given.) Examples are fixed.
Comment from David Baron 07 Apr 2008
18 Is 'resolution' in terms of CSS or device pixels? Should be device pixels.
Comment from fantasai 24 Apr 2008
19 Definitions of 'height' / 'width' / 'device-height' / 'device-width' need rewording. Reworded as suggested later in the thread.
Comment from Stewart Brodie 6 Jun 2008
20 Does the 'resolution' feature take a float or integer? Defined <resolution> to take an <float> immediately followed by a unit identifier per this e-mail from fantasai.
Comment from fantasai 9 Jun 2008
21 Do we need special wording for display-level transformations, like zooming and N-up printing? We're not going into this level of detail for now.
Comment from David Baron 11 Jun 2008
22 Allow whitespace around '/' for the aspect-ratio and device-aspect-ratio media features. Agreed.
Comment from David Baron 19 Jun 2008
23
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-mediaqueries/#media1 says:
  # For a media feature feature, (feature) will evaluate to true if
  # (feature:x) will evaluate to true for a value x other than zero.
 
Does this mean:
 
  (a) (width) is always true, even if the viewport width is zero,
  because "0px" is a value other than zero, or:
 
  (b) (width) is false when the viewport width is zero because "0px"
  and "0" are both not "other than zero"?
 
I'd also note that because specified widths cannot be negative,
(max-width) currently behaves the same as (width), whereas
(min-width) is always true.  Is that really intended?
Zero is clarified to mean 0px, 0, etc. Min/max prefixed media features without values cannot be used.
Comment from David Baron 19 Jun 2008
24
After reading http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-mediaqueries/#grid it's
not clear to me whether the queries "(grid: -1)" or "(grid: 2)"
should be parse errors or should always be false.  It should be
clear.
Clarified they are indeed parse errors.
Comment from Dean Jackson 30 Oct 2008
25The request is changing the syntax of aspect-ratio and device-aspect-ratio to floats and orientation to angles. The WG decided to not make a change here. The WG also decided to keep aspect-ratio and device-aspect-ratio and not drop them as suggested in the follow-up thread.
Comment from Jens Meiert 22 Sep 2008
26Editorial. Fixed.
Comment from Sergiu Dumitriu 23 Oct 2008
27Editorial comments. Also a question whether 'ex' should be described for tty since 'em' is defined. The WG decided to remove the definition of 'em' for tty and leave that definition up to the values & units draft.
Comment from Andrey Mikhalev 25 Feb 2009
28The grammar mixes CSS2 grammar and CSS core grammar productions. Fixed by using expr rather than value.
Comment from Anne van Kesteren 8 Dec 2008
29Media queries has the implied suggestion to violate core grammar error handling. Added a note of a clarification per fantasai's suggestion.