[csswg-drafts] [css-text] Rename `text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans` (#11283)

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

== [css-text] Rename `text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans` ==
Following the resolution in https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/3473#issuecomment-2504454983, opening an issue. I will copy my comment from that issue:

- - -

In various recent typographic contexts, words like “widows” and “orphans” can be considered insensitive, and also can be easily confused between themselves, with people often using one when meaning another.

<details>
<summary>From wikipedia</summary>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans#Definitions">Source</a>
<dl>
<dt>Widow (sometimes called orphan)</dt>
<dd>A paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, a widow is "alone at the top" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).</dd>
<dt>Orphan (sometimes called widow)</dt>
<dd>A paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, an orphan is "alone at the bottom" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).</dd>
<dt>Runt (sometimes called widow or orphan)</dt>
<dd>A word, part of a word, or a very short line that appears by itself at the end of a paragraph. Mnemonically still "alone at the bottom", just this time at the bottom of a paragraph. Orphans of this type give the impression of too much white space between paragraphs.</dd>
</dl>
<p>By this definition, this property should've been called `avoid-runts`, for example, which would be even harder for people to understand (and would also be insensitive, as it also seems to be used as a derogatory term).</p>
<hr/>
</details>

For example, Ellen Lupton writes about this in her [“Thinking with Type” book](https://ellenlupton.com/Thinking-with-Type), on page 128, and proposes a term “short lines” instead of “orphans”.

Given [the current description](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-4/#valdef-text-wrap-style-avoid-orphans) of `text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans` starts as “Specifies the UA should avoid excessively short last lines,” I propose renaming the value to `avoid-short-lines` (could be more explicit as `avoid-short-last-lines`, but this is probably too much)

- - -

In the meeting and in IRC, there were two questions brought up:

1. Should the name be `avoid-short-lines` or `avoid-short-last-lines`? Just `avoid-short-lines` might be a bit too vague, and authors could expect that short lines on other lines could also be avoided.

2. There are already `widows` and `orphans` properties in CSS.

My thoughts about these:

1. The current spec already allows UA to decide against improving the last line, so having the `avoid-short-lines` not doing something that they expect will be already an issue. I also think that a case when there are short lines in the middle of the text are relatively rare. It happens only when there are very long words with a short word between, and in the majority of cases, people want to fix the last line specifically. So, when an author trying to solve this problem would see the `avoid-short-lines` available, they will understand that it will solve it. The opposite: an author looking at the available values and wondering when they could use one is a much more rare case.

2. I'd vote to rename these two, but probably in a separate issue. While these properties exist, [their support](https://caniuse.com/css-widows-orphans) is very uneven, with Firefox not implementing them yet, and other browsers only supporting them for print, but not multi-column layout where we would want to have them as well.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/11283 using your GitHub account


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Received on Wednesday, 27 November 2024 17:57:12 UTC