Csswg-drafts: [css-color-4] Alias "grey()" to "gray()"?
As far as I'm aware, anywhere "gray" is used in CSS, "grey" is treated identically. Will level 4 colors no longer follow this, or was it an oversight?
jhpratt
All 5 comments
The gray/grey duplication was a property of the X11 colors that CSS took wholesale; it wasn't an intentional decision on anyone's part. (Take a look at Alex Sexton's talk about the history of these colors!)
The 'grey' spelling is a British (and ex-empire in generally) spelling; CSS uses American spelling, and we don't generally add British spelling aliases. (See the perennial request for a colour alias. ^_^)
tabatkins
on 8 Nov 2018
@tabatkins I had forgotten about the merging of colors. However, I feel as though people have come to expect gray and grey to work identically in all situations, as that's how it's been historically.
jhpratt
on 8 Nov 2018
The aliasing of international-English grey and US-English gray is _least_ problematic as a property value (but would probably still not be adopted, were those keywords to be proposed today). As a functional notation, it would be more problematic; it would require precedence and de-duplicating rules in case both were specified. Even more so for aliasing the color property to colour (and the same for all the *-color* properties.
Sorry, this would add far more issues than it solves.
svgeesus
on 8 Nov 2018
Well, there's always https://github.com/hashanp/postcss-spiffing if someone really, really wants to use British English 😄 I know this is not helping the discussion, but I just could not resist
HerrBertling
on 8 Nov 2018
Maybe an explanation about greyvs gray, or color vs colour would be good to add to one of these pages:
As a Canadian who teaches people HTML/CSS, the 'u' absent from color is an issue every single learner seems to stumble over at first because it doesn't appear wrong to them. It would be wonderful to have an official acknowledgement somewhere like these pages that's easy to point to and show people, as well as find if they're searching for it that explains why it's named the way it is and that US english is the standard for all CSS terminology.
tomhodgins
on 8 Nov 2018
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Most helpful comment
Maybe an explanation about
greyvsgray, orcolorvs colour would be good to add to one of these pages:As a Canadian who teaches people HTML/CSS, the 'u' absent from
coloris an issue every single learner seems to stumble over at first because it doesn't appear wrong to them. It would be wonderful to have an official acknowledgement somewhere like these pages that's easy to point to and show people, as well as find if they're searching for it that explains why it's named the way it is and that US english is the standard for all CSS terminology.