[css3-text] Tab U+0009 expansions to 8 spaces (was New WD of CSS Text Level 3

> Section 4.2, numbered list 2, item 2 states
> Each tab (U+0009) is rendered as a horizontal shift
> that lines up the start edge of the next glyph with
> the next tab stop. Tab stops occur at points that are
> multiples of 8 times the width of a space (U+0020)
> rendered in the block's font from the block's starting
> content edge..
>
> For certain documents (mobile, possibly others), 8
> times with width of a space can be a LOT of screen
> real-estate.  Can there be a property to define
> "tab-stop" rather than a hard rule?

That's a good point too, but I think HTML/CSS is not trying to be a good plain text formatter. The expansion of tabs in <pre> tag should be minimal and mostly for backward compatibilities.

Authors who want more precise controls should expand to appropriate spaces by scripts, or use other controls to format lines than <pre> tag.

Does this sound reasonable?


Regards,
Koji