deon VS Cassius

When reading the file, the environment variables will be obtained from the URL and populate the environment.

This is what I had in mind when designing the import functionality for deon [1].

Being able to import also makes it easy to have a .base, a .production, a .local setup, and combine them accordingly.

[1] https://github.com/plurid/deon

Hence the second sentence "[b]ut maybe you don't even need to build another Chromium." and then the second paragraph "cost-reducing" billions to millions day-dreaming of a specification-based pixel generator.

Of course, the n-th time is cheaper, easier, faster, case in point: I implemented 'deon', a notation format for structured data [1], using your amazing "Crafting Interpreters" for which I paid nothing since I was reading the web version as you were writing. Never had the chance to say thank you, somewhere in my drafts there is an email of appreciation: reading your book and applying it chapter by chapter, crafting a final, useful artifact, has been a beautiful experience, thank you very much, for all your writing, since I am a longtime reader of your technical and otherwise texts.

[1] https://github.com/plurid/deon

FWIW, while there are unfortunately only very few attempts at formalizing CSS, there's at least an unofficial, unreviewed (?), partial formal semantics for (CSS 2-era) float layout based on z3 SMT and Racket you can take a look at to get a flavor, though it isn't receiving further development.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

[2]: https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/css-floats.html

Do we need W3C anymore? The HTML 5 specification has been created by WHATWG for many years now, with W3C only rubber-stamping historic WHATWG versions until 2017 or so. SVG2 is going nowhere, and so isn't MathML, leaving the CSS working group as W3C's remaining point of influence over the Web. CSS is regarded as so poor and overdone a specification that the only two external projects for a formal specification have failed or remained woefully incomplete (1, 2).

1. CSS should've been split into app-y styles and doc-y styles a looong time ago; meaning that when you need JavaScript to make use of a feature anyway, there's no point in using CSS and it's better to set styles, layout using JavaScript rather than bloat CSS. The Houdini API was on the right track years ago.

2. The CSS WG at W3C must deliver formal specification rather than the prose they're writing up now. For an idea how a (partial) formal spec for CSS rendering looks like, see eg. [1], [2] (with limitations).

The one way complexity that both W3C and WHATWG have delivered over the past 15 years with complete lack of mental discipline due to financial dependency/job security will be a major source of confusion for generations to cone, and will not be looked at favorably.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

[2]: https://github.com/lmeyerov/sc

There's this cool project using z3 (and racket) for formalizing CSS rendering [1] I never came around to lift for anything. Maybe someone else interested in leading the web out of the dark ages and give W3C's CSS WG an idea what we expect from them will.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

FWIW, I know two (partial, kinda) formal specifications of CSS normal flow and float layout, both of which are finished ie dead projects:

[1]: https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper....

[2]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

(not counting the 1990s constraint CSS effort).

The first was merely part of a parallel compiler project and also covers table layout, whereas the second is a Racket (Scheme) program to formulate the HTML doc and CSS rules as a theory for submitting to z3 SMT to solve all kinds of decision problems (it can also produce a rendering).

Not sure that's very helpful; it would be cool if W3C can invest some time into better specs (not just prose).