Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-text] Reconsider the initial value of the `text-autospace` property (#12386)

@xfq @myakura @kojiishi 
Thank you for developing the conversation!

> Did they publish a specific reason?

I've been trying to reach out to the responsible person in JTF for the last few days, and I ended up asking my colleague, [Ryutaro Nishino](https://nishinos.com/profile/). He was one of the former JTF members, and he was even the chairperson in 2019, so I asked him the reason for the spacing removal in the JTF style guide.
His answer was: "Tools now automatically adjust the display to prevent text from appearing too cramped, so we decided to stop manually inserting spaces."
In a nutshell, they removed the manual spacing requirement because they expected tools to handle it automatically, not because spacing itself is bad.
He even said he personally still believes "some spacing between half-width and full-width characters is desirable if it isn't manual."
However, he was not sure whether the JTF style guide could be used as strong evidence for advocating general Japanese style standards, as it was produced only as a guide to unify Japanese translation notation.
The full resource that I copy/pasted from our discussion can be referred to [here in Japanese](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DjrF3zR-B0MQZfCV-Te-M_uuxYncqx13_SDeeqanS4A/edit?usp=sharing).

I agree that when people don't insert U+0020 spaces, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't want any visual spacing, as @myakura mentioned.
I also agree that they might find manual spacing inconsistent, or consider it to pollute the content. As @xfq mentioned, yes, content and styles should be kept separate.
In academic and e-pub contexts where Latin-CJK mixing is common, spacing has been used to improve readability - and tools like Word implement automatic spacing, as Nishino mentioned.
Looking at the [data showing 60% don't insert spaces](https://devadjust.exblog.jp/29549895/) - Now I wonder if this reflects the hassle of manual spacing rather than a preference against spacing itself.
The tricky part is that preferences seem context-dependent, as @kojiishi rightly pointed out. Dates can look too sparse with spacing, while technical content might benefit from it.

> If it is turned off by default, when a user wants to turn it on, they can only rely on the website developer to turn it on, and users have no other choice.

Yes, if we default to no-autospace, users who want spacing have to rely on developers to turn it on.
But then again, if we default to normal, users who don't want it also depend on developers to turn it off.
Either way, users don't have official control.
This makes me think the default should match what most users actually prefer - but that's exactly what we're struggling to figure out, and it's not realistic to get reliable data for now.

Since there are many guesses and unknowns without solid data, shipping with `no-autospace` seems sensible to me, considering web-compat and performance issues. And if browsers give users control (I'm not sure but something like `prefers-reduced-motion`?), we could revisit the default based on what people actually choose.
Maybe `normal` could be a safer option after we have both the data and ways for users to override it. It wouldn't be too late to change the default appearance after users get a way to override it.

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Received on Friday, 4 July 2025 16:49:46 UTC