Re: [css-writing-modes] Rename extent/measure to block-size/inline-size?

On 28/02/2014 16:09, Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2014-02-28 10:58 (GMT) Simon Sapin composed:
>
>> I know it’s not Last Call yet :) But what do you think of renaming
>> "extent" a.k.a. "logical height" to "block size", and "measure" a.k.a.
>> "logical width" to "inline size"?
>
> Nay!
>
>> I may be getting English wrong, but to me "extent" and "measure" are
>> both synonymous to "size".
>
> Size of an object displayed on a two dimensional surface is a function of two
> lengths (or extents, or measures).

Ok, maybe my idea of "size" was wrong. The point remains that, outside 
of typography, extent and measure are roughly synonymous to each other 
and the terms by themselves are not good at indicating which is in which 
dimension.

Still, even if "size" is two-dimensional, "inline size" could mean "the 
inline-dimension component of the size" (and similarly for "block size")


> Size is poorly used in CSS as applied to text. 10px is a measure of a single
> length. Objects measuring only a single length are invisible abstractions.
> Text has both height and width, so a "10px" glyph is really something on the
> order of 50px in *size*, a function of a 10px measure vertically and ~5px
> measure horizontally, and thus ostensibly visible.

That would be 50 squared px, even though I’ve never seen that unit used 
before.


> Doubling text height from
> 10px to 20px actually quadruples its *size*. A reduction of text size from
> 16px to 10px, a CSS size reduction of 37.5%, is a *physical* size reduction
> of ~61%. IOW, 10px text is 39% of the *size* of 16px text. Thus, neither
> extent nor measure are good synonyms for size.
>
>>   The terms by themselves don’t tell me which
>> is which. I understand (after reading it in the spec) that "measure" is
>> more specific in typography, but I don’t know how much of the "target
>> audience" is familiar with that. I wasn’t.
>
> Measure and extent as used imply single measurement results, single lengths,
> not areas (sizes) resulting from measurement of two lengths.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/extent?q=extent 
defines "extent" as "The area covered by something: an enclosure ten 
acres in extent", which doesn’t sound any more one-dimensional than "size".

-- 
Simon Sapin

Received on Friday, 28 February 2014 16:59:02 UTC