[web-animations-2] Should ‘state’ triggers cancel() their animation(s) outside the exit range if the animation finished?

[DavMila]

state animation triggers play or resume their related animation when within their trigger range and pause them when outside their exit range. If, after being played, the animation finishes prior to the trigger’s exit condition being met (being outside the exit range), should state triggers reset the animation when the exit condition is met?

Resetting the animation allows the trigger to naturally restart the animation the next time its trigger condition is met, making it a special case of a repeat trigger.

Not resetting the animation means after it finishes, subsequently meeting the trigger condition won’t replay the animation, making it a special case of a once trigger.

I propose not resetting the animation after it finishes. If an author would like a state trigger to restart after “finishing” they can specify animation-iteration-count: infinite.
OTOH, if we specify that the exit condition resets a finished animation, and the author does not want the animation to restart, they can simply nuke the trigger, i.e. animation.trigger = null.. Though this feels less clean IMO.

[ydaniv]

I agree state triggers should not reset animations on exit. Their main use case is specifically pause/resume of animations with infinite iteration count.
I think ideally this type should just pause/resume and rest of the playback behavior should be according to the animation's options.
A use case for resetting could be animations with a long duration but a finite number of iterations, though this is somewhat contrived.

[ydaniv]

@DavMila do you think we need to add anything explicit to the spec? Or close as no change?