CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 5

1. Introduction

This is currently an early draft of the things that are new in level 5. The features in Level 3 and Level 4 are still defined in [css-conditional-3] and [css-conditional-4] and have not yet been copied here.

CSS Conditional Level 5 extends the @supports rule and supports query syntax to allow testing for supported font technologies.

It also adds an @when rule, which generalizes the concept of a conditional rule. Anything that can be expressed in an existing conditional rule can be expressed in @when by wrappng it in an appropriate function to declare what kind of condition it is. This allow authors to easily combine multiple types of queries, such as media queries and supports queries, in a single boolean expression. Without this, authors must rely on nesting separate conditional rules, which is harder to read and write, presupposes the conditions are to be conjoined with the “and” boolean relation (with no easy way to indicate anything else), and restricts their utility in the proposed conditional rule chains.

It also adds @else rules, which immediately follow other conditional rules and automatically qualify their conditions as the inverse of the immediately preceding rule’s conditions, such that only the first matching rule in a conditional rule chain is applied.

2. Extensions to the @supports rule

This level of the specification extends the <supports-feature> syntax as follows:

<supports-feature> = <supports-selector-fn> | <supports-font-tech-fn>
                    | <supports-font-format-fn> | <supports-decl>
<supports-font-tech-fn> = font-tech( <font-tech> )
<font-tech> = [ features-opentype | features-aat | features-graphite
                    | color-colrv0 | color-colrv1 | color-svg | color-sbix | color-cbdt
                    | variations | palettes | incremental ]
<supports-font-format-fn> = font-format( <font-format> )
<font-format = [ collection | embedded-opentype | opentype
                    | svg | truetype | woff | woff2 ]

<font-format> and <font-tech> should be imported from css-fonts-4, not defined here.

<supports-font-tech-fn>

The result is true if the UA supports the font tech provided as an argument to the function.

Note: The allowed values for the font-tech() function are the same as those for the tech() function in the '@font-face' src descriptor.

<supports-font-format-fn>

The result is true if the UA supports the font format provided as an argument to the function.

Note: The allowed values for the font-format() function are the same as those for the format() function in the '@font-face' src descriptor.

2.1. Extensions to the definition of support

A CSS processor is considered to support a font tech when it is capable of utilising the specified CSS Fonts 4 § 11.1 Font tech in layout and rendering.

A CSS processor is considered to support a font format when it is capable of utilising the specified CSS Fonts 4 § 11.2 Font formats in layout and rendering.

3. Generalized Conditional Rules: the @when rule

The @when at-rule is a conditional group rule that generalizes the individual conditional group rules such as @media and @supports. It is defined as:

@when <boolean-condition> {
  <stylesheet>
}

Where <boolean-condition> is a boolean algebra a la Media Queries 4 § 3 Syntax, but with media() and supports() functions as leaves.

Define "boolean algebra, with X as leaves" in a generic way in Conditional, so all the conditional rules can reference it directly, rather than having to redefine boolean algebra on their own.

The media() and supports() functions are defined as:

media() = media( [ <mf-plain> | <mf-boolean> | <mf-range> ] )
supports() = supports( <declaration> )

A media() or supports() function is associated the boolean result that its contained condition is associated with.

4. Chained Conditionals: the @else rule

Usually, conditional group rules are independent; each one has a separate condition evaluated without direct reference to any other rule, and decides whether or not to apply its contained rules based solely on its condition.

This is fine for simple conditions, but makes it difficult to write a collection of conditionals that are meant to be mutually exclusive: authors have to very carefully craft their conditions to not activate when the other rules are meant to, and make sure the collection of conditionals don’t accidentally all exclude some situation which is then left unstyled.

The @else rule is a conditional group rule used to form conditional rule chains, which associate multiple conditional rules and guarantee that only the first one that matches will evaluate its condition as true. It is defined as:

@else <boolean-condition>? {
  <stylesheet>
}

@else is interpreted identically to @when. If its <boolean-condition> is omitted, it’s treated as having a condition that’s always true.

A conditional rule chain is a series of consecutive conditional group rules, starting with a conditional group rule other than @else, followed by zero or more @else rules. There cannot be anything between the successive conditional group rules other than whitespace and/or comments; any other token “breaks” the chain.

Should we require that only the last @else in a chain can have an omitted condition? It’s not uncommon for me, when debugging code, to short-circuit an if-else chain by setting one of them to "true"; I presume that would be similarly useful in CSS? It’s still pretty easy to see you’ve done something wrong if you omit the condition accidentally.

Within a conditional rule chain, the conditions of each conditional group rule are evaluated in order. If one of them is true, the conditions of all following conditional group rules in the chain evaluate to false, regardless of their stated condition.

An @else rule that is not part of a conditional rule chain is invalid and must be ignored.

For example, here’s a (somewhat silly) conditional chain:

@when media(width >= 400px) and media(pointer: fine) and supports(display: flex) {
  /* A */
} @else supports(caret-color: pink) and supports(background: double-rainbow()) {
  /* B */
} @else {
  /* C */
}

Exactly one of the preceding rules will be chosen, even though the second rule doesn’t exclude large widths, fine points, or flexbox support, and the last rule doesn’t specify anything at all.

To achieve the same result without conditional rule chains, you’d need to write:

@media (width >= 400px) and (pointer: fine) {
  @supports (display: flex) {
    /* A */
  }
  @supports not (display: flex) {
    @supports (caret-color: pink) and (background: double-rainbow()) {
      /* B */
    }
    @supports not ((caret-color: pink) and (background: double-rainbow())) {
      /* C */
    }
  }
}
@media not ((width >= 400px) and (pointer: fine)) {
  @supports (caret-color: pink) and (background: double-rainbow()) {
    /* B */
  }
  @supports not ((caret-color: pink) and (background: double-rainbow())) {
    /* C */
  }
}

This is simultaneously hard to read, requires significant duplication of both conditions and contents, and is very difficult to write correctly. If the conditions got any more complicated (which is not unusual in real-world content), the example would get significantly worse.

In this example, three different color font technologies are tested, in order of preference, plus a monochrome fallback. The most capable, COLRv1, supports both gradients and font variations; the next best choice, SVG, supports gradients while the least capable, COLRv0, supports flat color fill only.

The fallback has no test condition, so will always be chosen unless one of the earlier conditions succeeds.

@when font-tech(color-COLRv1) and font-tech(variations) {
  @font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-gradient-var.woff2); }
}
@else font-tech(color-SVG) {
  @font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-gradient.woff2); }
}
@else font-tech(color-COLRv0) {
  @font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-flat.woff2); }
}
@else {
  @font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-fallback.woff2); }
}

Notice that in this example, the variable color font is only downloaded if COLRv1 is supported and font variations are also supported.

Notice too that only one of the available options will be downloaded; this would not be the case without @when and @else, as the next example shows.

In this example, although it appears that the fallback will not be used if COLRv1 is supported, in fact both fonts will be downloaded, which wastes bandwidth if it is not used.

The fallback might still be used for some characters; for example, if the color font supports only Latin, while the fallback supports Latin and Greek.

@font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-fallback.woff2);
@supports font-tech(color-COLRv1) {
  @font-face { font-family: icons; src: url(icons-gradient-var.woff2); }
}

Security Considerations

No security issues have been raised against this document

Privacy Considerations

The font-tech() and font-format() functions may provide information about the user’s software such as its version and whether it is running with non-default settings that enable or disable certain features.

This information can also be determined through other APIs. However, the features in this specification are one of the ways this information is exposed on the Web.

This information can also, in aggregate, be used to improve the accuracy of fingerprinting of the user.

Acknowledgments

The @when and @else rules are based on a proposal by Tab Atkins.

Changes

Additions since Level 4

Added @when and @else.
Extended supports queries to express font capabilities via font-tech() and font-format().

Conformance

Document conventions

Conformance requirements are expressed with a combination of descriptive assertions and RFC 2119 terminology. The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in the normative parts of this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119. However, for readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in this specification.

All of the text of this specification is normative except sections explicitly marked as non-normative, examples, and notes. [RFC2119]

Examples in this specification are introduced with the words “for example” or are set apart from the normative text with class="example", like this:

Informative notes begin with the word “Note” and are set apart from the normative text with class="note", like this:

Advisements are normative sections styled to evoke special attention and are set apart from other normative text with <strong class="advisement">, like this: UAs MUST provide an accessible alternative.

Conformance classes

A style sheet is conformant to this specification if all of its statements that use syntax defined in this module are valid according to the generic CSS grammar and the individual grammars of each feature defined in this module.

A renderer is conformant to this specification if, in addition to interpreting the style sheet as defined by the appropriate specifications, it supports all the features defined by this specification by parsing them correctly and rendering the document accordingly. However, the inability of a UA to correctly render a document due to limitations of the device does not make the UA non-conformant. (For example, a UA is not required to render color on a monochrome monitor.)

An authoring tool is conformant to this specification if it writes style sheets that are syntactically correct according to the generic CSS grammar and the individual grammars of each feature in this module, and meet all other conformance requirements of style sheets as described in this module.

Partial implementations

So that authors can exploit the forward-compatible parsing rules to assign fallback values, CSS renderers must treat as invalid (and ignore as appropriate) any at-rules, properties, property values, keywords, and other syntactic constructs for which they have no usable level of support. In particular, user agents must not selectively ignore unsupported component values and honor supported values in a single multi-value property declaration: if any value is considered invalid (as unsupported values must be), CSS requires that the entire declaration be ignored.

Implementations of Unstable and Proprietary Features

Non-experimental implementations

Once a specification reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage, non-experimental implementations are possible, and implementors should release an unprefixed implementation of any CR-level feature they can demonstrate to be correctly implemented according to spec.

To establish and maintain the interoperability of CSS across implementations, the CSS Working Group requests that non-experimental CSS renderers submit an implementation report (and, if necessary, the testcases used for that implementation report) to the W3C before releasing an unprefixed implementation of any CSS features. Testcases submitted to W3C are subject to review and correction by the CSS Working Group.