[css3-text][css3-ruby] Even inter-character spacing in Ruby and Text

This is a request for discussion that is out of band from publishing WD for the CSS3 ruby currently going on.

While reviewing the current ED, I found 'ruby-align' property[1] has ''distribute-letter'' and ''distribute-space'' values.

These styling are defined in JLREQ as how to style ruby base characters, but they are also equivalent to what JLREQ defines as "Even inter-character spacing" in 2.1.3[2].  JLREQ does not mention in 2.1.3 unfortunately but there are two types of "Even inter-character spacing", and both types are covered by the 'ruby-align' property.

That is great, but I'm wondering two possible issues:

1. These two types of "Even inter-character spacing" are used in other places than ruby base text as well, usually in table cells, but only one of them is covered in CSS3 Text right now.

2. In ruby, 'ruby-align' is the property to set this behavior, but in CSS3 Text, the author must set 'text-align-last'[3] to ''justify'' and also 'text-justify'[4] to ''distribute'', and sometimes 'text-align'[5] to ''justify'' as well if it can be multiple lines.  Isn't this inconsistent and inconvenient?

I don't know if there were any historical reasons for CSS3 Text to do so, but the solution Ruby took seems to be simpler to me, and supports both types of "Even inter-character spacing".

Can anyone please shed me lights on how we ended up with this differences?

If there were not much reasons to do so, what do you guys think changing CSS3 Text to follow CSS3 Ruby?  In other words, although it may vary depending on the answers to the above questions, I'm proposing:

1. Add ''distribute-letter'' and ''distribute-space'' values to 'text-align' property.
2. Remove ''distribute'' value from 'text-justify' property.
3. Remove 'text-align-last' property if this is the only usage for the property, or otherwise add the two values to 'text-align-last' property as well.


[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-ruby/#rubyalign
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/jlreq/#en-subheading1_2_3
[3] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#text-align-last
[4] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#text-justify
[5] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#text-align


Regards,
Koji

Received on Friday, 3 December 2010 17:32:15 UTC