w3c / w3c/csswg-drafts

[css2] Undefine the "transparent" value from border-color/etc?

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CSS2
Dominant language
Bikeshed
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Description

Back in the days of CSS2, 'transparent' wasn't a <color> value for some reason, so it had to be specially added to every single property that took a color.

Previously this wasn't an issue, but now that CSS2 has been fixed up to use proper, Bikeshed-friendly definition markup, suddenly CSS2 is claiming to have definitions for the 'transparent' keyword, clashing with Color 4's canon definition and causing a bunch of link failures across the repo.

It looks like this is only a problem for the border-color properties. color apparently didn't allow transparent in CSS2 (?!?) and background-color doesn't explicitly mark up its values with definitions. However, we should go ahead and clean up background-color as well to remove the explicit mention of transparent, at least.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Locate the CSS2 definitions for the border-color properties and background-color, then compare how they mark up the transparent keyword with Color 4's canonical definition. Remove the conflicting explicit definitions or mention, and run the repository's Bikeshed build or link checks to confirm the failures are resolved.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
css
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

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