[csswg-drafts] [html] Change default <sup> and <sub> styling?

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

== [html] Change default <sup> and <sub> styling? ==
HTML [currently specifies](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#phrasing-content-3) the following default styles for `sup` and `sub`:

```css
sub { vertical-align: sub; }
sup { vertical-align: super; }
sub, sup { line-height: normal; font-size: smaller; }
```

[In an article on web typography I just read](https://alistapart.com/article/web-typography-numerals#section3], it was pointed out that a better default styling would be

```css
sub { font-variant-position: sub; }
sup { font-variant-position: sup; }
```

Is this a change we could consider making? I thought the right people to discuss this with would be the CSSWG, thus I am here.

(One thing that might kill this idea: if this only works on fonts with a sub/sup variant built in, then it seems like it wouldn't be a good default. I wasn't clear from reading the article whether that was the case; it says "That will work fine for browsers that support OpenType", but what about on non-OpenType fonts in browsers that do support OpenType?)

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1888 using your GitHub account

Received on Tuesday, 17 October 2017 15:05:25 UTC