[css-ui] "control" is undefined

[jugglinmike]

gh-3971 generalized the specification's references to "form controls" to simply "controls". However, neither term has a precise definition in either CSS or HTML. This is particularly hazardous because the term "control" may be interpreted to involve interactivity, but (as noted in gh-3971) it is actually intended to include non-interactive elements like <meter>.

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui-4/#control-styling

[bkardell]

Probably much to the dismay of everyone, I would like to ask the potentially naive, and maybe already asked question: is a control really just something which has shadow dom? Like, if you don't hinge it on something like 'interactive element' and it gets wonky and hard to define -- doesn't it wind up being more or less anything with a shadow dom and the conversion more or less the same as those being had by folks producing custom elements with the same sorts of concerns/disagreements about whether you should expose parts/thems them and how?

[jugglinmike]

So long as we're being naive... If "control" were defined as "anything with a shadow DOM," then could appearance: none simply be interpreted as "do not render the shadow DOM"?

[SelenIT]

Does the term control used here differ from the term widget used in the "Rendering" section of the HTML standard? If the difference is not substantial, maybe it would make sense to reuse the same term in both places?

[jugglinmike]

That looks very promising, @SelenIT! Reusing "widget" would satisfy @frivoal's criteria (from gh-3991):

Ideally, we'd just refer to a term defined in the HTML spec, and they'd update it when they add new elements.

As you say, we'll need someone with familiarity in this space to say whether the definition is appropriate. If so, we'll need to formally define "widget" in HTML since currently, it's currently only insinuated by the sub-sections of the "Widgets" section.

[jugglinmike]

HTML doesn't define the term "widget" in a way that Bikeshed is aware of. We could link informally using anchor tags, but that's prone to rot. To properly reference the term "widgets" here, we'll need to update HTML to formally define it.

@frivoal could you verify that replacing the undefined term "control" with the term "widget" as defined in HTML is appropriate?

[jugglinmike]

@frivoal I'd be happy to submit a patch changing "control" to "widget," but I'd like to confirm that such a change would be acceptable. Can you let me know?

[zcorpan]

I think "widget" for these things is OK.

"Widget" is also a term in ARIA, which is a class of roles, closely related to these but also including e.g. link (which wouldn't be an HTML/CSS "widget").

https://w3c.github.io/aria/#widget_roles

[jugglinmike]

Thanks, @zcorpan! I've proposed the first step (defining the term) over in whatwg/html:

whatwg/html#4725