Re: New CSS1 draft available

Drop-caps have given us some headaches and we discussed all the issues
that Lee brought up many times. Drop-caps cannot be handled properly
without special treatment, but we thought we shouldn't ask too much
from CSS1 implementers.

Drop-caps have some similarity to floating elements because of the way
other text wraps around them, so we treat them as simple floats for
now. We are aware that it will produce less than professionally
looking designs.

Eventually they'll need something extra. Aligning them to the
cap-height and the baselines should be possible, but it should also be
possible to have large initials that are half above and half below the
first line. Only the lower half will have text wrapping around it.

Intelligent contours (a `V' is not a rectangle), and letters that are
`visually' aligned, rather than mechanically, should also be possible.

We're open for suggestions. There is still a lot to do after CSS1. On
our list of things to investigate are

   1. `li' (lines) as a special, context-dependent length unit
   2. a property drop-cap-lines
   3. a new type display:drop-cap
   4. access to font information (ascender, descender, cap-height, etc.)
   5. vertical alignments for floats

(2) and (3) together would be a simple way of specifying traditional
drop-caps, but more and more you see designs where the top of the
large initial is above the first line. Maybe `drop-cap-lines' should
have two parameters: how much to lower the baseline and how much to
raise the top. For example: `3' (= `3 0') = lower 3 lines, `3 2' is
lower 3 lines and raise 2. But what would `3.5' mean?


Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/People/Bos/                      INRIA/W3C
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 93 65 77 71                 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Monday, 23 September 1996 09:08:51 UTC