[css-align] Is align-items: flex-start a subset of the effects of align-items: start ?

[romainmenke]

A user requested a PostCSS plugin that would convert start to flex-start and end to flex-end for align-items.

csstools/postcss-plugins#108

• start and end are less characters to type
• flex-start and flex-end have better browser support

When I do a few tests in browsers this seems to work fine.

My concern is that these are listed as separate features in the specification and in MDN documentation. flex-start does not appear to be a legacy notation for start.

If these are separate features that happen to have the same effect in some cases we should not convert flex-start to start, even if users prefer short keywords.

[fantasai]

They behave differently in flexbox. flex-start references flex-flow, whereas start references only the writing mode.

[tabatkins]

Yes, do not convert between them, they're distinct. (But in non-flex contexts, they are indeed identical.)

[romainmenke]

I see, thank you 🙇