Spec proposal: harmonize compact, compact-n, horizontal, horizontal-compact appearances

[LN]

@martijnr

So having to remove them in order to show columns and then bring them back with another appearance, just doesn't seem like a great re-design

I certainly do agree with that. But so far the tradeoffs for what we've explored haven't seemed worth it.

Maybe the proposal we started this thread with can be salvaged by not reusing compact. That is, something like introducing

• columns (currently horizontal),
• columns-n (like current compact-n but with radio buttons/checkboxes) and
• columns-flex (currently horizontal-compact)
• no-buttons as a modifier that applies to all (and perhaps vertical lists?)

The "new form on old client" case is not as nice as what we discussed here because those would be shown vertically. But we can mitigate that by waiting to publish user-facing documentation until after upgraded clients have been out in nature for a while, as @martijnr suggested.

I guess that @martijnr you were suggesting to keep using compact to address that somewhat but I think it is much harder to explain and keep straight than three base behaviors with a consistent modifier.