[csswg-drafts] [css-text-4] text-align-first (#13330)

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

== [css-text-4] text-align-first ==
I was playing with `text-align-last`, and noticed an issue that was at some point discussed but was decided to postpone for later and, I guess, never revisited (https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2013Aug/0391.html)

Basically, if we have just one line, then `text-align-last` overrides the `text-align`/`text-align-all`. This is not the effect you sometimes want — you could want the first line to be start-aligned, and only if it _overflows_ make the last line end-aligned, for example. But adding `text-align-last: end` makes it so that the _only_ line will be end-aligned, without a way to make it start-aligned.

I think the best way to handle this would be to add a `text-align-first` property. This would also allow defining three different alignments: for the first line, for the last line, and for anything in-between.

One visual style that this will allow to do is basically this:


```
| A single non-overflowing line.            |
```

```
| Two lines that will overflow with         |
|              the second line end-aligned. |
```

```
| Three lines overflowing,                  |
|       with the middle line centered       |
|            and the last line end-aligned. |
```

With `text-wrap: balance`, the last case can appear more often, as this visual style makes more sense when all lines have  approximately the same length.


Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/13330 using your GitHub account


-- 
Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config

Received on Sunday, 11 January 2026 23:12:36 UTC