[selectors] Wrapping with :is() to get forgiveness changes semantics

[mgol]

The discussion in #7676 ended with a conclusion to make :has() unforgiving since you can always wrap its contents with :is() or :where():

fantasai: i support restricting to :is and :where, it's really simple, and because we do it this way you can control whether something is forgiving or not by wrapping in :is or :where

This has been since incorporated into the spec at https://w3c.github.io/csswg-drafts/selectors/#typedef-forgiving-selector-list:

Note: Style rules still use the normal, unforgiving selector list behavior. is used in :is() and :where() only. Although it does have some minor implications on specificity, wrapping a style rule’s selector in :is() effectively "upgrades" it to become forgiving, so long as it doesn’t contain any pseudo-elements (which aren’t valid in :is() or :where()).

However, this doesn't look so simple to me, since :is/:where take global selectors. For example, someone wanting to run:

document.querySelectorAll('#test-elem:has(:new-pseudo-with-limited-support,div span)')

in a forgiving manner so that it works in browsers without support for :new-pseudo-with-limited-support may be surprised that the following:

document.querySelectorAll('#test-elem:has(:is(:new-pseudo-with-limited-support,div span))')

will no longer require both the span and its ancestor div to be descendants of #test-elem.

Do I not understand something about this recommendation or is it not precise enough?

[Loirooriol]

You can use

document.querySelectorAll('#test-elem:has(:is(:new-pseudo-with-limited-support),div span)')

[mgol]

@Loirooriol yes but then you need to precisely identify which parts you consider problematic; this can be hard e.g. if what you pass to :has() is dynamic. In any case, the wording:

wrapping a style rule’s selector in :is() effectively "upgrades" it to become forgiving

suggests wrapping the whole selector part you're interested it, at least that's how I read it.

[Loirooriol]

You can also split :has() into multiple, so that each one gets a complex selector, and wrap them all inside a single :is().

document.querySelectorAll('#test-elem:is(:has(:new-pseudo-with-limited-support), :has(div span))');

But yeah, may be good to warn about this. Also in nesting when omitting &, .foo .bar a.k.a. & .foo .bar and :is(.foo .bar) a.k.a. & :is(.foo .bar) are different.

[tabatkins]

Yeah, :is() is a no-op (ignoring specificity) if you wrap an entire selector in it, or you wrap just a compound selector in it. If you have a combinator inside the :is() and outside it, it does indeed change the behavior.

And since :has()'s argument is a relative selector, it always has a (perhaps implicit) combinator at the start, which you can't include in the :is(), so wrapping the entire :has() argument will always run afoul of this issue. You have to instead push it down to just wrap compound selectors, or lift it entirely outside as :is(:has(...)).

(Lifting it outside doesn't act quite the same - it'll prevent an invalid selector in :has() from invalidating the whole selector, but it won't let you drop just the invalid selector from the :has() argument and continue with the rest. But generally that should be fine.)