[csswg-drafts] [css-text-decor-4] Should the spec for `text-decoration-trim` suggest applying `auto` to Chinese & Japanese content by default? (#12951)

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

== [css-text-decor-4] Should the spec for `text-decoration-trim` suggest applying `auto` to Chinese & Japanese content by default? ==
Spec: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-decor-4/#text-decoration-skip-inset-property

The spec says that the initial value of `text-decoration-trim` is zero, so no trimming happens by default.

I'm wondering, though, whether we should recommend that browsers apply `text-decoration-trim: auto` (e.g. via the default HTML stylesheet) to elements that are styled with decoration lines if the content language is Chinese or Japanese.

Here's a screenshot of a fragment from Japanese wikipedia, with the Firefox preference to "always underline links" enabled:

<img width="1259" height="520" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7efc100e-4be5-42b2-b5b1-514d74de36ab" />

Note the two regions circled in red: the first of these contains four separate links, and the second contains three. But in each case, we see a single continuous underline, making it far from obvious to the user that there are multiple short links.

With a rule such as
```
a:lang(ja) { text-decoration-trim: auto; }
```
we'd get something like this instead:

<img width="1258" height="520" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/433b0fe9-ed31-4812-9d1b-6d3ace7e2551" />

This seems to me a significant improvement. Should we include some such recommendation as a note in the spec?

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/12951 using your GitHub account


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Received on Tuesday, 14 October 2025 17:54:33 UTC