Re: font-size and accents, again

"L. David Baron" wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:18:31 -0800, erik@netscape.com (Erik van der
> Poel) wrote:
> >
> > Those units are defined in terms of "font size", and since font-size
> > corresponds to "em", I think those units should continue to be based on
> > the em, rather than the maximum height of the glyphs.
> 
> The reason I think this is a bad idea is that it is not backwards
> compatible with most current behavior, and the current behavior makes
> any line-height above 1.0 "safe" (i.e., it cannot cause overlap).  This
> would mean that things that were once reasonable suggestions could now
> be unsafe.
> 
> Since scaling factors (i.e., 'normal' or a number) are the only safe
> way of suggesting line-height because of inheritance, I think they should
> be kept safe in all respects.

OK. But if backwards compatibility is a consideration (and I think it
should be), then we cannot change the em, either. It should probably
continue to mean the max height of the font, if that's what most
installed copies of browsers do.

> > If we need a way to refer to the max height of the font, let's introduce
> > a new unit called "mx" (or whatever). E.g. the following sets the
> > line-height to 1.04 times the max height of the font:
> >
> >   P { line-height: 1.04mx }
> 
> New units can't be introduced to CSS for at least 4 years or so in any
> useful way, since many existing browsers will treat them as pixels.

What a mess.

Erik

Received on Monday, 22 November 1999 17:00:47 UTC