- From: Chris Lilley via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 02:52:52 +0000
- To: public-css-archive@w3.org
I thank @litherum for starting this meta-issue and would like to slightly broaden it from _criteria for **new** generic font families_ to _criteria for generic font families_. In other words, it seems necessary to revisit why we (continue to) have generics at all, what authoring purpose they are intended to serve, what are their semantics, and then potentially deprecating some of them. The generics in CSS1 described a very different world: downloadable fonts had yet to happen, platforms were simpler and more limited than now, in particular regarding I18n; and CSS was seen much more as a set of vague stylistic hints that might be interpreted quite broadly. The CSS1 generics had three members which made stylistic sense from a Latin-centric worldview: proportional serif, proportional sans, fixed width for code listings; and two vaguely defined and aspirational members which were of questionable utility even then. Are generics intended to capture the _use_ of fonts (formal, playful, etc) or the _appearance_ (regardless of the cultural meanings attached to that appearance in some writing systems)? Do generics make sense in a world where downloadable fonts are the norm and generics merely influence fallback? The lack of clarity on intended semantics became clear as soon as the application of the original set to other writing systems was attempted (are all Arabic fonts cursive? what does fixed-width signify for writing systems where most glyphs are fixed width?) and when the initial set was extended to cover other writing systems with different categories (such as a category somewhere in between serif, sans, and cursive). I feel that we can't reasonably define the existing generics or indeed extend them, without clarity on their purpose. Great f2f topic! -- GitHub Notification of comment by svgeesus Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4910#issuecomment-618146319 using your GitHub account
Received on Thursday, 23 April 2020 02:52:54 UTC