Implementer feedback requested on a CSS 3 Text requirement

The current CSS 3 Text draft contains this line:

"The UA should place the start and end of the line inwards from the
content edge of the decorating element so that, e.g. two underlined
elements side-by-side do not appear to have a single underline. (This
is important in Chinese, where underlining is a form of punctuation.)"
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#line-decoration

Clearly, no existing browser does this.  This behavior would be a
problem for editing (execCommand() et al.), and I also strongly
suspect that it would break a ton of websites.  So I'm asking for
feedback on whether Microsoft, Mozilla, and/or Opera might be willing
to implement this feature, or if they definitely would not be willing
to implement it as it stands (e.g., only if it were opt-in through a
new CSS property or value).

I picked three more or less random CSSWG members from Microsoft,
Mozilla, and Opera -- if you're the wrong person to answer, please
forward it on.  An answer of just "might conceivably implement" or
"definitely will not implement" should be enough.  Thanks.


I already got feedback from David Hyatt and Ryosuke Niwa in #webkit
(edited for brevity):

<dhyatt> AryehGregor: you mean you'd inset by like 1px all lines?
<AryehGregor> dhyatt, I dunno, I guess.  Here's the spec:
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#line-decoration
<dhyatt> AryehGregor: if so ummm yeah, no way. that would break the world.
<rniwa> this seems to have a significant impact on editing
<rniwa> because that would mean that <span class="underline">hello
</span><span class="underline">world</span> will be different from
<span class="underline">hello world</span>
<dhyatt> yeha that's preposterous
<dhyatt> at least for the existing web
<rniwa> AryehGregor: I don't see why this feature is so important
<rniwa> AryehGregor: what is the use case?
<AryehGregor> rniwa, I don't know, I'm not Chinese.  :)
<rniwa> AryehGregor: it seems that we need to know usage of this
particular feature
<dhyatt> AryehGregor: anyway, i would recommend a separate property or
language-specific behavior
<rniwa> AryehGregor: I think it'll be really helpful to know
motivations behind this

That seems like a definite "no" from WebKit.

Received on Thursday, 14 April 2011 22:02:42 UTC