Re: [css-text] text-justify

On 01/01/2016 03:47 AM, Jacob Parker wrote:
> Currently, the draft gives the values `inter-word` and
> `inter-character` as possible values for `text-justify`.
> These are both great options to have, but only being
> able to use one at a time seems to be restrictive. It
> could be of great benefit to allow these to vary not
> only individually, but in a ratio to each other.
>
> I would like to suggest `justify-word-spacing` and
> `justify-character-spacing`, which would be positive
> integers like the `flex-grow` property. This would make
> it trivial to add extra parameters to the specification—
>such as `justify-character-stretch`—should it become a
> needed feature. In addition, it would also extend these
> rules to match the flex specification, allowing shrinking
> of word spacing, and a basis for word spacing.

Hi Jacob,

Sorry for the late response.
There were controls for this added to the letter-spacing
and word-spacing properties in earlier drafts of CSS Text.
However, justification is extremely complicated, particularly
when considering the accommodations for writing systems other
than Latin), and even within Latin the quality of justification
depends greatly on good line breaking and other technology.
Since the variance among UAs was greater than the variance that
could be controlled with such properties, it was decided to
defer this feature until some future point, and to focus on
improving line-breaking, hyphenation, and internationalization
of justification instead.

Perhaps at some point in the future we will return to this
topic. :)

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 18 August 2016 05:30:50 UTC