Re: [css3-text] 'First letter' delimitation

On 10/12/10 00:32, Phillips, Addison wrote:
>>>
>>> In theory, yes. I'm concerned that in practice there are going to
>> be
>>> lots of holes in the knowledge of particular language needs in
>> software,
>>> especially for minority languages. I'm thinking that it might be
>>> worthwhile to define a syntax by which a web author could
>> explicitly
>>> delimit a 'first letter'.
>>
>> I share your concern, but do we need an explicit syntax? A web
>> author
>> can always use <span> and style it the same as first-letter.
> 
> Really? I find, increasingly, the need for grapheme cluster boundary handling, especially in JavaScript and in places like CSS styling. Styling with <span> is incredibly inconvenient and doesn't work well with generated data (where span insertion relies on automagic means).

I'm all for giving access to grapheme boundaries from CSS/JavaScript.
however, determining such boundaries should still remain the UA's job.  Lets
not design for fixing broken UAs with CSS.

My 0.02CAD,
behdad