RE: [css-fonts] proposal needed for synthesizing oblique fonts in vertical text

> From: John Daggett [mailto:jdaggett@mozilla.com]
> Right sloping in the glyph design coordinate system.  In other words, the synthesized
> glyphs are sheared right in the glyph design coordinate system, then laid out (either rotated
> 90 right or upright).
> 
> In visual terms, I'm proposing (1) and I *think* you're proposing (2) in the illustration
> below:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2013May/att-0027/synthetic-italics-tategaki.png


I understand your opinion, thank you for explaining in this detail.

> Your proposal introduces an inconsistency when 'text-orientation:
> upright' is used, real italics and synthetic italics will differ in how they display, one will slant
> right, the other down.  Case (3) in the illustration above results from setting 'font-family:
> Arial', the real italic face of Arial is used but for the Japanese text the italics are
> synthesized.

Good point, I missed this case, and I agree this is an issue for (2).

> But as everyone is saying, there really isn't a use case for vertical italic Japanese text runs

The use is less common, but use case does exist. "Less common" is not equal to "there really isn't a use case." It's used in Harry Potter. It's used in several books in light-novel style[2].

> and proposal (2) *does* introduce an inconsistency into vertical runs of Latin italics, the
> synthesized italics will differ from real italics.

I agree on this point. But issues of your proposal are listed in my blog post[1]; there are much more common and severe issues. Upright non-full-width Latin characters in Italic are really rare. Your proposal breaks dashes in simple Latin text in sideways. You need to create a list of common code points not to slant. Don't you agree, if we chose the least problematic case, it'd be (2)?

[1] http://koji.ec/archives/32

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel


/koji

Received on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 15:58:30 UTC