Re: [css3-writing-modes] rename 'text-orientation' initial value to 'mixed-right'

Koji Ishii wrote:

> While I agree that using "normal" works a good CSS default value name,
> since natural default orientation for vertical text varies by scripts,
> I have a fear that making it "normal" for this property can be
> controversial. "mixed-right" or "upright-right" at least try to
> describe what it does. For this specific property, I prefer value name
> describing what it does so that we don't have to discuss "normal for
> who."

In CSS terminology, 'normal' is usually associated with default
behavior.  It is *not* an assessment of what is "normal" in the general
sense of the world.

The term 'mixed-right' communicates *very* little, I don't think anyone
would understand what that means without looking up the definition.  And
by labeling it something other than 'normal' it's easy to miss that this
is the default behavior.

> We discussed on "upright" v.s. "stacked" too, fantasai had the same
> idea, but I felt it may or may not improve, depends on what their
> natural scripts are, and thought it's not worth to take the change.

The problem with 'upright' in this context is that it's not really
"upright all the time", it's "upright most of the time but sometimes
not".  If sideways-xxx means that something is always displayed
sideways, some authors would assume that 'upright' is *always* upright.

As Florian noted during the F2F, if 'upright' is equivalent to "vertical
stacked" in Microsoft's proposal for UTR50 then there isn't currently a
value that is the complement to 'sideways'.

Regards,

John Daggett

Received on Wednesday, 15 February 2012 08:14:25 UTC