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I assume this is not more powerful computationally than existing selectors, right? What exactly keeps CSS+HTML from being Turing-complete?

discuss

shakna|7 months ago

If you include the user clicking, then it already is. [0]

[0] https://github.com/brandondong/css-turing-machine

Dylan16807|7 months ago

Basic arithmetic plus iteration is Turing complete. CSS has basic arithmetic but not iteration.

Some people have already claimed it's Turing complete by making the user hit tab and space to copy data between iterations, but I wouldn't listen to them. That copying role is simple but it's not negligible.

cluckindan|7 months ago

Nothing. Given infinite memory, a NAND gate is Turing complete by itself and trivial to construct based on the OP examples.

csmantle|7 months ago

Unfortunately the examples provided by OP only contain combinational circuits, which by def. have no memory.

zamadatix|7 months ago

It lacks a usable form of pure-CSS recursion (which was intentionally excluded in this implementation) but that's not as big a problem as one would expect for a lot of practical things.

amelius|7 months ago

Ok, so NoScript should also block (parts of) CSS now, and not just JavaScript?

cdaringe|7 months ago

I’m going to assume this is a joke. However, if it’s not a joke, no. We as a community have gone to great lengths to use responsive design over the past few years. There are still styling cases for complex elements that can’t be implemented without JavaScript. This is just an additional step of the journey to allow intermediate styling for complex cases.

If anything, it should enable (minor) expansion of noscript!