Re: Korean should default to word-break: keep-all or not?

On May 5, 2012, at 3:47 AM, Koji Ishii wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Can someone please help me to figure out an issue in CSS Text Level 3?
> 
> The current CSS Text Level 3 has informative appendix for the default UA stylesheet[1], which contains:
> 
> /* Korean prefers to break only at spaces */
> :root:lang(ko) {
>  word-break: keep-all;
> }
> 
> The "word-break: keep-all"[2] disallows breaking between CJK characters and make line breaking rules just like English. Years ago I was told from my Korean colleague that Korean line breaking rules should be the same as English and CJ rules should not apply, so we put this. But Example 3 of UAX#14, 8.2 Examples of Customization[3] says:
> 
>> Depending on the nature of the document, Korean either uses implicit 
>> breaking around characters Space-based layout is common in magazines 
>> and other informal documents with ragged margins, while books, with 
>> both margins justified, use the other type, as it affords more line break
>> opportunities and therefore leads to better justification.
> 
> If this behavior depends on documents, and most sites do not use "word-break: keep-all" today (as far as I observed quickly,) I guess it's probably wrong to put "word-break: keep-all" into the UA default stylesheet.
> 
> I proposed removal of this to the www-style[4], but could someone please confirm if my understanding is correct?

Yes, you are correct. Especially in a digital context, the default does not need to use the rule word-break: keep-all - to be a bit more pragmatic, most of modern webpage designs actually explicitly use word-break: break-all as the layouts are heavily bounding box based.

I'd probably change it like this:

-This option is mostly used where word separator characters are present to create line-breaking opportunities, as in Korean.
+This option may be used where word separator characters are present to create line-breaking opportunities, as in Korean.

and

-/* Korean prefers to break only at spaces */
-:root:lang(ko) {
-  word-break: keep-all;
-}

Received on Saturday, 5 May 2012 09:31:52 UTC