[csswg-drafts] [css-text-decor] Minimum width for unskipped lines?

r12a has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts:

== [css-text-decor] Minimum width for unskipped lines? ==
1.4. Text Decoration Line Continuity: the text-decoration-skip property
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-decor-4/#text-decoration-skip-property

In the Arabic layout task force, we're beginning to see evidence that too short an underline between skipped segments can cause confusion over which letter of the alphabet is used.  This is because dots are used to distinguish between different letters in the arabic script alphabet.

Here are some examples:

![screen shot 2017-04-24 at 18 38 20](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4839211/25350598/93af10f0-291d-11e7-88b2-81d7c98f2b46.png)

note the four dots below the first word (on the right) in this kufi example, one of which is an underline.  Perhaps still distinguishable here, if you look carefully, but if we reduce the size to something more likely (20xp) we get 

![screen shot 2017-04-24 at 18 39 00](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4839211/25350676/dc0a7c36-291d-11e7-847b-f31bf3e8e1f0.png)

Note also, above, how we appear to have two dots below the first character on the right, rather than one.

Here's the same thing in another font:

![screen shot 2017-04-24 at 18 39 52](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4839211/25350739/04c85bf2-291e-11e7-997f-b033c2c2d4df.png)

And here's an example where the line becomes so thin it looks like [U+0656   ARABIC SUBSCRIPT ALEF](https://r12a.github.io/uniview/?char=0656) 

![screen shot 2017-04-24 at 18 37 32](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4839211/25350579/866fef04-291d-11e7-8808-e2ba6b2a3293.png)

So i'm thinking there should be some way to specify a minimum length for underline segments in ink skipped text.  

Presumably, this is not just desirable for the arabic script, but narrowness of the kind in the last example is likely to be a problem for many scripts.   On the other hand, it may be necessary to specify different minima per script, or even per font, in some cases.


Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1288 using your GitHub account

Received on Monday, 24 April 2017 17:51:36 UTC