[csswg-drafts] [css-fonts] font-family:monospace isn't a good fit for authors' desire (#3707)

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

== [css-fonts] font-family:monospace isn't a good fit for authors' desire ==
When authors think "I want my text to be monospaced," they apply `font-family:monospace`. However, there's a problem when applying this to internationalized text.

For example, consider `<span lang="zh-Hans" style="font-family: monospace;">我在学习程序语言Python。</span>`. If you consider the `lang` attribute, and pick a Simplified Chinese font, that font (likely) supports Latin characters, and they (likely) aren't monospaced. If you don't consider the `lang` attribute, you end up with bad choices of fonts in the first place.

If you require that any font that `monospace` maps to have the `isFixedPitch` bit set in the [`post` table](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/post), you've just disqualified many fonts that you shouldn't have, because fonts may be monospaced for their primary script but not for their other supported scripts. Also that bit can just be set incorrectly.

It seems like the choice to handle monospace at the font selection level, rather than as a distinct setting, was unfortunate. However, it's probably too late to fix this; I'm just filing this issue for posterity.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/3707 using your GitHub account

Received on Monday, 4 March 2019 23:52:10 UTC