Re: [css-text] Clusters for letter spacing in Thai and other complex scripts

I don't think this is the right way to fix the problem.  The UAX29
definition of extended grapheme cluster works just fine in Thai/Lao
when what you want is a grapheme cluster.  The issue is that letter
spacing is not a logical operation on characters; it's a visual
operation on glyphs. In other words, there are two distinct kinds of
cluster:

a) there is a _logical_ cluster of _characters_, which is used for
selection, cursor movement and other editing operations; this is the
UAX29 extended grapheme clusrer

b) there is also a _visual_ cluster of _glyphs_, which is what you
need for letter-spacing

In many scripts, these cooincide, but Thai/Lao shows that they don't
always do so.

So I think the right approach is to fix the definition of
letter-spacing to say that the units between which you add extra space
will not always correspond exactly to extended grapheme clusters:
implementations should do the typographically correct thing for a
particular script.

James

> On Sep 24, 2013, at 8:07 AM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
>
>> On 09/21/2013 10:37 PM, James Clark wrote:
>> The Editor's Draft for CSS Text says that letter-spacing is applied between adjacent "characters", where a "character" is
>> defined as a UAX29 extended grapheme cluster. This doesn't do the right thing in Thai in the case of SARA AM (U+0E33).
>>
>> For example, to properly letter-space the word คำ (0E04 + 0E33), [...]
>
> The spec does explicitly allow for tailoring; UAX29 is just a
> baseline requirement. However I'm not sure that the tailoring
> you're describing is quite in line with the kind that's allowed
> by UAX29, so I've broadened the wording a bit and added your
> example here:
>
>  http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-text/#grapheme-cluster
>
> If you have a spec that I can point to normatively, I'm happy
> to do that. :) But otherwise, I think the example will have
> to suffice.
>
> Please let me know
>  1. If this is satisfactory, or you want something else.
>  2. If it's ok for us to use your wording verbatim.
>
> Thanks!
>
> ~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 25 September 2013 02:52:22 UTC