RE: [css3-writing-modes] vertical orientation and UTR50

> From: Florian Rivoal [mailto:florianr@opera.com]
> I kind of agree with the idea, but it seems to be that what needs to target a snapshot
> of UTR50 is the webkit implementation much more than the spec. If putting it in the
> spec would help webkit get there, then I am in favor of doing that.

You're right. That was exactly what we wanted at Hamburg.

> On the other hand, I am not entirely sure why it helps. If the webkit implementors
> don't care, and then it doesn't matter what we do. If they do care about matching
> what we plan to do, a resolution saying "we will use UTR50 when ready, until then
> implementations are encouraged do try and stay close to the behavior advocated in
> UTR50's current drafts" should be enough.
> 
> Or do we expect that authors will code to the spec, and complain about webkit working
> differently, forcing it to change, rather than code to the currently available behavior?

And the resolution at Hamburg actually helped, although it may not make WD now. By that resolution, authors understood something more stable and usable is coming soon. Implementers understood it's something worth to spend time on. Access, a Japanese implementer, actually created a patch and is going to upstream to Readium, and is also seeking for a possibility to upstream WebKit too. I'm not sure if they can make it or not, but yes, that was what I wanted, and the resolution at CSS WG helped it to happen.

> The demand for vertical text seems stronger in ebooks than in the general web, so
> the risk is that if we don't act early to guide the early ebooks implementation towards
> a behavior we consider sane, they may depend on an unspecified vendor specific
> behavior in the long run because they started with that, putting pressure on that
> vendor not to change its behavior, and on others to reverse engineer it.

It was exactly where Japanese authors and implementers were before Hamburg. Thank you for explaining that in clean words.

Now that both authors and implementers are aligned to draft #5.5 thanks to the resolution and thanks to a lot of work to make it, and draft #6 is in the horizon, Sylvain's proposal makes great sense to me now.


Regards,
Koji

Received on Monday, 2 July 2012 15:56:37 UTC