[css3-writing-modes] Examples of normal, unscaled glyphs work better than width-variant glyphs for text-combine-horizontal

Given the discussion in the last conf call, here's a list of examples where normal, unscaled glyphs work better than width-variant glyphs for text-combine-horizontal.

1. One real example is on the spec[1]. This publication uses normal, unscaled glyphs for text-combine'd digits. By looking carefully at "10" and "27", you will find that they're slightly wider than other Kanji/Kana characters, which are 1em wide. You will also find that "2" is exactly the same glyph as its sideways rotated one.

2. Not a specific example but old revisions of the spec said that UA should scale only if it's wider than 1.1em tolerance. We removed it as per WG resolution, but the original motivation was that JLREQ, along with typographers and font designers preferred normal glyphs rather than width-variants if overflow is small enough to not worry about overlaps, similar to optical alignment in Latin typography.

3. Rare case but a scan of a sci-fi novel of a crazy computer is here[2]. Engineers in the novel are discussing about an "if" statement of the computer program. It makes more sense to use normal proportional glyphs here since it's a regular word and it can fit within 1em.

Hope these examples make sense to agree that there are cases where the use of width-variant does not produce the optimal results.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-writing-modes/#fig-mac
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2013Jul/0028.html

/koji

Received on Monday, 15 July 2013 10:43:41 UTC