Re: [CSS3 Text] Thoughts on hanging-punctuation property

Daniel Aleksandersen wrote:
> On 2007-10-09, fantasai wrote:
>> Daniel Aleksandersen wrote:
>>> These are the once I would like to see instead:
>>> none | [ start || left-edges || edges || end || right-edges ]
>>>
>>> As everyone can see I use plural in ‘edges’ to clarify that it will
>>> apply on multiple edges.
>> Multiple edges?
> 
> Yes, the edge of every line. I call that more than one. Sorry if my English 
> is a problem for my you. ;-)

Ah. I'd consider that one edge. :) It's the left/right edge of the paragraph.

>>> I also changed it from start and end to left and right
>>> edges; to further clarify which edges will get hanging‐punctuation.
>>> Another reason for doing this is that ‘left hanging‐punctuation’ is a
>>> common term in typography.
>> The reason for using 'start' and 'end' instead of 'left' and 'right' is
>> that it automatically works correctly both for right-to-left and
>> left-to-right scripts.
> 
> Yes. I actually understood there was a internationalisation reason. But I 
> still thinks using left and right is better. It is basically the same 
> thing. But since CSS addresses almost every other direction using left and 
> right, I though it was best to use it here to. And as I said, it makes 
> things more simple.

No, it makes things more complicated. 'start' is the better option because
it works in all cases and handles e.g. automatic translation as well. I see
no good reason to make a less-good option available as well.

('text-align' will also be taking a 'start' value: we're trying to transition
towards start/end rather than left/right for these things.)

> If you look trough the two character blocks I proposed—try using 
> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm—you will see that 
> it makes sense for almost every character. Except the U+2052 COMMERCIAL 
> MINUS SIGN and other glyphs that appear separated from other characters 
> using U+20 SPACE and other spacing characters.
> 
>> Can you post examples (e.g. scans) of where this is applied to other
>> punctuation, or where "left-edge" ('start-edge') hanging punctuation is
>> used?
> 
> http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Illustrator/13.0/images/tp_36.png
> Left hanging punctuation to the right. (Image courtesy of Adobe.)

Ok, that could be handled with the existing definition for
   hanging-punctuation: start;
since the emdash is on the first line of a block.

> http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/120/
> Showing left (first illustration) and right (second illustration) hanging 
> punctuation to the right. Try hovering the two images! (Images courtesy of 
> Artemy Lebedev.)

Hmm, the hanging quotation mark at the start would work with hanging-punctuation:
start (that's what the 'start' value was added /for/), but the parenthesis on
the fifth line would indeed require a 'start-edge' value.

How common is that effect? It looks a bit weird to me.

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2007 15:23:54 UTC