Re: [Resent: Disadvantages of ch unit (was: stability of root em unit spec)]

FWIW, in most (though by no means all) fonts, the digits are
monospaced, even if the font is not.

That being said, I agree that knowing the width of the zero alone,
without knowing for sure that the digits are monospaced, would seem to
be of limited value.

Regards,

T

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Josef Schmid
<e9427749@student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Betreff: Disadvantages of ch unit (was: stability of root em unit spec)
> Datum: Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:35:14 +0100
> An: www-style@w3.org
>
> Hi , all!
>
> Maybe this is discussed/mentioned before by others.
> In that case i apologize for wasting bandwidth.
>
> I wrote:
>
> [some stuff against 're', and a idea for general unit extension]
>
>> And instead of 'ch', 'width of "0"'.
>> (So as special case, you can write 'width of "m" from :root' ;-)
>
>
> In the spec:
> | The width of the "0" (ZERO, U+0030) glyph found in the font for the
> | font size used to render. If the "0" glyph is not found in the font,
> | the average character width may be used.
>
> At first) the 'average char width' can be far from the width of "0".
> Depending of the used font and the capabilities of the browser,
> this can produce very different results.
> (For chinese fonts this is typically near factor 2).
>
> At second)
> Depending of the language and the font used.
> The width of "0" say nothing about the average char width.
> Even not about the average digit width.
>
> In the case you know the factor (for example kanji & fullwidth chars),
> this is cumbersome. (U+FF10)
> But for most you don't know.
>
> If you need it only for digits, than for languages with own digit
> glyphs it does not help.
> (Even in the case of western language, you have often medial digits
>  (U+1D7E2??) and mathematically monospaced digits (U+1D7F6) also.)
>
> I thing the simplest solution is to allow the web developer to specify
> the char.
>
> Also useful is the possibility of width from a string.
>
> So i like to propose:
>  * width of <string>, where string is in single or double quotes.
>  * height of <string>
> In both case it is the needed spaced, and the value depend on
> block-progression, font-size, and other font properties.
>
> I know units with spaces and variable parts are new in CSS,
> but i think if we want such units like ch & rem, than
> the expressiveness should be extend. (Not doing the same fault
> as PHP, which ended up with ~20 different sort keywords.*)
>
>> Sorry for my bad English [, again].
>
>
> jm2c,
>  Jos (btw. What you think about 'e0' as unit name? ;-) ef
>
> ad *) Sorry, hopefully i don't start a programming language
>      flame war.
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Sunday, 11 January 2009 09:15:48 UTC