On 5 Sep 2006, at 12:54, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
Instead of returning an uppercase six digit hex value I suggest
returning a lowercase value for compatibility with what UAs
(including IE) currently do
It may be the right decision on compatibility grounds, but other
than that lowercase hexadecimal digits (0-9, a-f) are almost
always a bad choice, because a, c and e have no ascenders like
every hindu-arabic decimal digit has and thus make the number
harder to read. This obviously does not apply to fonts with old-
style numerals aka. text figures, where 0, 1 and 2 have neither
ascenders (like 6 and 8) nor descenders (like 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9),
but those are rather unlikely to be used in a programming
environment.
I believe this, but I suspect that the gain in compatibility is
well worth the minor loss in efficiency for people who are hand-
coding.
I disagree, and always prefer uppercase hex digits to lowercase ones,
it makes the numbers easier to read IMO.
- Nicholas.
