RE: [css3-text] 'First letter' delimitation

> >
> > In theory, yes. I'm concerned that in practice there are going to
> be
> > lots of holes in the knowledge of particular language needs in
> software,
> > especially for minority languages. I'm thinking that it might be
> > worthwhile to define a syntax by which a web author could
> explicitly
> > delimit a 'first letter'.
> 
> I share your concern, but do we need an explicit syntax? A web
> author
> can always use <span> and style it the same as first-letter.

Really? I find, increasingly, the need for grapheme cluster boundary handling, especially in JavaScript and in places like CSS styling. Styling with <span> is incredibly inconvenient and doesn't work well with generated data (where span insertion relies on automagic means).

Some of these "minority" languages have very large speaker populations. We should carefully consider support for them... not just on equitability grounds (which *is* important), but since their relative economic and practical importance is growing.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N, IETF IRI WGs)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.

Received on Tuesday, 12 October 2010 04:32:40 UTC