WD-css3-fonts-20010731 comments

Fonts <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-fonts-20010731/>



2. Introduction <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-font
s-20010731/#introduction>

"One or more characters may be depicted by one or more 
abstract glyphs, following rules defined by fonts, by language adn 
by context."

Typography: change "adn" to "and".



3 Font specification <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css
3-fonts-20010731/#font-specification>

"For example a font that you might think of as being bold"

Change to "For example a font that one might consider bold"



3.2 Font family: the 'font-family' property 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-fonts-20010731/#fon
t-family-prop>

"Font family names containing whitespace [link to syntax 
module] should be quoted. If quoting is omitted, any 
whitespace characters before and after the font name are 
ignored and any sequence of whitespace characters inside the 
font name is converted to a single space."

If a family name that is syntactically an identifier contains a series 
of escaped spaces, all the spaces must be preserved.  The 
odd treatment of font family names runs back to CSS1, whose 
lexer ignored whitespace.  Though it is now water under the 
bridge, identifiers should have been for generic families only, 
while only strings should have been permitted for other families.

A clarification is in order regarding computed and actual values 
of 'font-family'.  As I understand things, the computed value 
largely matches the specified value except that generic 
family names must convert to a specific family name (a 
user-agent-dependent string) and names formed by a series of 
one or more identifiers must convert to a string with 
whitespace appropriately collapsed.  Actual values are similar lists 
of strings, but give only the font families used in the rendition, 
the order of names proceeding by the order in which the user 
agent taps families for glyphs.  For example:

specified: "Capitalis Quadrata", Times   New   Roman, serif;
computed: "Capitalis Quadrata", "Times New Roman", 
"Default serif";
actual: "Times New Roman", "Mathematical font";


3.5 Shorthand font property: the 'font' property 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-fonts-20010731/#fon
t-shorthand>

"The 'font' property is, except as described below, a 
shorthand property for setting 'font-style', 'font-variant', 
'font-weight', 'font-size', 'line-height', and 'font-family', at the 
same place in the style sheet."...

"All font-related properties are first reset to their initial 
values, including those listed in the preceding paragraph plus 
'font-stretch' and 'font-size-adjust'. Then, those properties that 
are given explicit values in the 'font' shorthand are set to 
those values."

So the 'font' shorthand property actually stands for 
'font-style', 'font-variant', 'font-weight', 'font-size', 
'line-height', 'font-family', 'font-stretch', and 'font-size-adjust'. 
 However, the last two properties always take their initial 
values when 'font' is set.

Are the font emphasis, font effect, and font smoothing properties 
set to their initial values by the 'font' shorthand property?

"e.g., a smaller version of the 'caption' font might be used for 
the 'smallcaption' font"

Typography: change "smallcaption" to "small-caption".

"That is why this property is "almost" a shorthand 
property: system fonts can only be specified with this property, 
not with 'font-family' itself, so 'font' allows authors to do more 
than the sum of its subproperties."

This passage is incorrect and should be eliminated.  The 
'font' shorthand property is merely the sum of its parts, 
doing nothing more than assigning values to its 
constituent properties.  The merit of the 'font' shorthand property 
is that, by the use of keywords, it avoids the necessity of 
knowing which combination of values produces the look of 
system interfaces.



4.1 Font effect: the 'font-effect' property 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-fonts-20010731/#fon
t-effect-prop>

As discussed on www-style (<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Publi
c/www-style/2001Oct/0035.html>, <http://lists.w3.or
g/Archives/Public/www-style/2001Oct/0038.html>) the 
'font-effect' property should be eliminated, its 
functionality supported by the 'filter' property (for values 
'emboss' and 'engrave') and by stroke properties (for value 'outline').



4.2 Font smoothing: the 'font-smooth' property 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-fonts-20010731/#fon
t-smooth-prop>

"Value: auto | never | always | <absolute-size> | length | inherit"

Typography: change "length" to "<length>".

The value 'always' has the same effect as the value '0' and should 
be eliminated.



4.3 Font emphasis: the 'font-emphasize-style',  
'font-emphasize-position' properties and the shorthand 
'font-emphasize' property <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/W
D-css3-fonts-20010731/#font-emphasize-props>

Replacing "emphasize" in the property names with "emphasis" 
is more pleasant and is consistent with, for example, 
'text-decoration' (not 'text-decorate').

Received on Friday, 30 November 2001 22:31:26 UTC