Re: Feedback on hyphenation properties

Also sprach Simon Fraser:

 > > As you can see, the property used to be called 'hyphenate' but was
 > > changed to make it different from XSL. I think the new 'hyphens' work
 > > well -- it's shorter an easier to type. 
 > 
 > I don't know much about XSL, but is there a reason to keep the CSS property
 > names different from terms that XSL uses? Does this cause actual problems in real
 > use, or is it just to avoid developer confusion?

Normally, we try to reuse names. In the case of 'hyphenate', however,
XSL uses this definition:

  hyphenate: false | true 

  http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/#common-hyphenation-properties

In CSS, "true" and "false" are avoided to allow for extensibility. The
proposed CSS definition is:

  hyphenate: none | manual | auto

Also, I'd like to propose another value:

  hyphens: all

which, mostly for testing purposes, add markers in all hyphenation
opportunities. Prince implements this and it seems useful:

  http://www.princexml.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3758

 > > The reason for having a comma-separated list is to allow different
 > > hyphenation resource formats to be supplied.
 > > 
 > > The only such format I know is the format used by TeX and OpenOffice:
 > > 
 > >   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenation_algorithm
 > 
 > I don't see any description of the format of the hyphenation dictionary
 > there.

Sorry, wrong link:

  http://www.ctan.org/cgi-bin/search.py?metadataSearch=hyphenation&metadataSearchSubmit=Search

 > I think if the CSS spec references a dictionary type, we need
 > to at least specify what the format is, and ideally link to a normative
 > reference on said format.

In general, I agree that it's useful to point out which formats
browser should support. We don't do that for the 'icon' property, though:

  http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#icon-property

 > Its also unlikely that we'll support this format in WebKit on Mac, since
 > we rely on an underlying framework for hyphenation, and it has its
 > own dictionaries supplied with the OS.

That's fine. The draft states:

  In any case, the UA can also use local resources not listed on this
  property.

If you want, we can also change the text from:

  This property specifies a comma-separated list of external resources
  that can help the UA determine hyphenation points.

to 

  This property specifies a comma-separated list of external resources
  that optionally may help the UA determine hyphenation points.

or something?

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Monday, 9 August 2010 11:40:29 UTC