Re: [CSSWG] Minutes and Resolutions TPAC F2F 2009-11-02: text-overflow

I'd reply to Dan directly but his email doesn't seem to have reached my
mailbox...

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Dan Bernstein <mitz@apple.com> wrote:

> On Nov 12, 2009, at 3:29 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> > I thought we *did* end up resolving some of the ellipsis questions
> > over lunch-time discussions?  Specifically, I think I ended up
> > convincing people pretty well that presentation-based ellipsizing was
> > optimal (and in the general case, the only sane thing), and further
> > conversation with some people who were familiar with bidi conventions
> > in paper text supported that.
>
> Such “visual” truncation is truly illogical. Removing an arbitrary chunk
> from the middle of the text makes it hard to follow and can easily lead to
> misunderstanding.

At the very least, it requires re-reading some of the text when it’s
> revealed in its entirety.
>

The same could be said of 'overflow:hidden' with the default
'text-overflow:clip', so this is not a new problem on the Web, or in desktop
apps that use clipping, or in any environment where part of a line is not
visible. It's a fundamental problem with mixed-direction text. (One of
many!)

In purely static situations, logical truncation with the ellipsis drawn in
the middle where the text has been truncated (which no browser does) sounds
most logical to me. (Although it's not completely logical: e.g. given
"English ... WERBEH" and no context to determine the base direction, you
can't tell which text has been truncated). But in the presence of resizing,
scrolling, editing and other dynamic changes, logical truncation could be
confusing, as Tab described. It wouldn't be the first time that conventions
for static media are non-optimal for the Web.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]