[css3-text] hanging-punctuation: first or text-trim: hang-first

The hanging-punctuation: first[1] exists to support all 3 types of "positioning of opening brackets at line head" defined by JLREQ[2]. Type 1 and 2 of Fig. 71 are supported by the text-trim property[3], but technically speaking, type 3 hangs opening brackets into the margin/indent area, and therefore the current spec classifies this as hanging punctuation.

I'd like to propose to change this to a new value of the text-trim property. We can discuss the value name later, but for now, my proposal is "hang-first".

Here are the reasons for this proposal:
1. Questions keep coming up as I speak to people; hanging-punctuation:first is not used in Japan, or text-trim does not support type 3 of "positioning of opening brackets at line head" in JLREQ.
2. Technically speaking, it is hanging punctuation, and that's why it's defined as it is today, but authors think it's part of text-trim. CSS model should match to authors' mind rather than to technical implementations.
3. Because it is text-trim in authors' mind, changing this value may unintentionally change other hanging punctuation settings.
4. Adobe has proposed to extend more precise control of text-trim in future. Having this value in the text-trim property might make such extensions easier in future.

I was thinking to add an example section to hanging-punctuation as questions keep coming up, but then I started to think, maybe the design isn't good enough to understand without examples.

Feedback is appreciated.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#hanging-punctuation
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/jlreq/#en-subheading2_1_5
[3] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#text-trim-prop


Regards,
Koji

Received on Sunday, 27 March 2011 09:43:21 UTC