Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-fonts] Proposal to extend CSS font-optical-sizing (#4430)

**@tiroj** :

>> How about a new opsx axis that is specified to pixels not points?
>
> I'm not sure whether it would solve the problem or not.

Right, because as @drott says in https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=773697#c17, the real problem is now that,

> We can't make a change in Chrome that breaks existing usage and introduces interoperability issues while currently all browsers are aligned.

So when you say,

> the standard scale needs to be interpreted, and pretending that the scale is px instead of typographic points isn't interpreting the scale: it's throwing it out and doing something unpredictable.

it seems to me you are using the wrong tense: The reality here in May 2020 is that it WAS thrown out, because today all browsers (plus Apple's OSes) are indeed doing something "predictable" with opsz values – treating them as pixel sizes.

And therefore for MS to add a new `opsx` axis to the OT spec, that is specified to pixels not points, would not help, because it will take a couple of years for that to happen and be implemented, and `opsz` will still be treating the values as pixel values in browsers and Apple OSes. 

So, it seems to me that given how little `font-optical-sizing:auto` has been implemented outside of browsers and Apple OS, rather than add an `opsx` axis, the only practical solution here apart from a new `font-optical-sizing` property, is for MS to update the OT spec to clarify that actually the opsz values are pixels, not points.

As far as I know (and I'll be happy to be corrected on this!) there are not yet any fonts widely adopted that use the opsz axis; not even the San Francisco or New York families in macOS, which can be downloaded from https://developer.apple.com/fonts – they are distributed as dozens of OTF files.

In fact, I would guess that the number of fonts ever made publicly known with an opsz axis is under 1,000, and therefore it is entirely practical to let everyone who has made opsz fonts know that the OT spec is about to change in this way, and allow them to recalibrate and prepare to re-release their fonts in advance of the change. 

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Received on Thursday, 21 May 2020 12:57:19 UTC