Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-text] Should 'hyphens: auto' work if lang="" is not declared?

3% of webpages (if the stats are representative) use `hyphens:auto` 
without declaring the language on the html element. The problematic 
pages are a strict subset: those that uses `hyphens:auto` without 
declaring the language on the element (or an ancestor of the element) 
where `hyphens:auto is applied. This may be close to the same 3%, or 
maybe be substantially less.

Even if we keep the 3% as a baseline, this does not necessarily mean 
that changing the behavior would just break these sites. It also fixes
 them. Whether it fixes them more, or break them more depends on 2 
things:
1 - how bad is the breakage / how good is the fixing
2 - what percentage of the audience of the sites is affected

On 1, I would argue that the imp-
rovement of going from inco-
rrect hyphenation to none
is larger than the pro-
blems of going form corre-
ct hyphenation to none.
On the one hand, we have me-
aning alt-
ering behavior, while on the
other, we have a small imp-
airement to typ-
ogra-
phic quality.

As for 2, it depends on what percentage of the audience of these web 
sites is viewing them from a environment set up in a different 
language from the content's. Depending on the site, this could be 
close to none, or close to most.

Finally, I'd like to note that safari does not support the unprefixed 
"hyphens" property, only "-webkit-hyphens". Depending on the 
correlation between using the prefixed and unprefixed together, 
declaring the language, and having an international audience, it is 
hard to tell if safari extending that behavior the the unprefixed 
version would keep things mostly as they are, or break a substantive 
number of pages that so far (correctly) did not hyphenate. It may also
 be possible to get safari's current behavior with the -webkit- 
prefix, but not with the unprefixed property.

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Received on Monday, 23 January 2017 06:09:25 UTC