Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-fonts] font-size: 'medium' value is the user's preferred font size

> If most people don't know, or don't take into account, or browsers don't implement, the concept that medium was supposed to be the user's preferred font size, then it was correct to remove it in Fonts 3. So, why reinstate it?

For me, the first question is: do browser's implement it this way?  That is, do they adjust the actual value of `font-size: medium` text to match the user's preferred setting, or do they match it to an absolute value? If so, it's up to the specs to make sure that web authors know about it.

Based on my test ([Codepen](https://codepen.io/AmeliaBR/pen/a9172c6a1c854703a3e24e03f9a913b9)):

- Chrome and Firefox _do_ adjust `medium` to match the preferred font-size. (Which is *slightly* confusing in Chrome because their preferred font-size dialog itself uses small/medium/large/etc keywords as options, but that's a minor quibble compared to the usefulness of this feature!)

- As far as I can tell, MS Edge and Safari don't have any option, in the browser or OS level, to set a user preferred font-size.

So with two rendering engines implementing this behavior, and the other two *not contradicting* it, I'd say this relationship should be made explicit in the specs.

As part of that, I'd recommend reconsidering the terminology that these are "absolute size" keywords. They are absolute in the scope of a document (I.e., they aren't affected by inheritance), but they are not absolute in the same way that lengths are absolute.

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Received on Friday, 13 April 2018 22:14:20 UTC