[Mapcss] Proposal: Drop css's ugly colour specifications

[Steve Bennett]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 2:25 AM, Sebastian Klein <bastikln at googlemail.com> wrote:
> There are certain advantages to have opacity as an extra property. If you
> like to modify an existing default style and, e.g. make all filled areas
> transparent, this could be done like this:
>
> area {
>  fill-opacity: 0.2;
> }

I agree with this. I think that including opacity in a colour
specifier is the type of "leaky abstraction" that Thomas was arguing
against earlier: it is not at all intuitive to someone who doesn't
work in computer graphics that opacity is a "a colour".

We could possibly allow it as a fourth colour element as a short hand:
rgb(50,100,150); opacity:0.5; == rgba(50,100,150,0.5);

But honestly I think that introduces complexity with little payoff.

Btw Thomas sorry if it sounds like we're all against you or something
- I'm certainly not, so please do bring up other suggestions for
discussion.

Steve