Re: CSS and East Asian Width

> Xidorn Quan <quanxunzhen@gmail.com> ��� 2015撟�12���17��� 銝����3:54 撖恍��嚗�
> 
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 5:30 PM, Timothy Chien <timdream@gmail.com <mailto:timdream@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> The Unicode簧 Standard Annex #11 have long defined a set of
>> recommendations [1] on handling character width in East Asian context.
>> 
>> [1] http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/#Recommendations
>> 
>> I assume the recommendations are directed to handling the display of
>> the data so it ought to be addressed in CSS. However, these remain
>> unspecified in the CSS spec, and web authors have to workaround the
>> problems (particularly, characters with ambiguous widths) by
>> hard-coding OS font names or even shipping their own web font, to
>> ensure width are displayed correctly in critical places, like ASCII
>> art "images���.
> 
> I don't really see anything which should be addressed but remains
> unspecified in CSS in the section you mentioned. Could you point out
> exactly which sentences do you think of?

May it relate to CSS Font Module level 3 East Asian font variant?

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts/#font-variant-east-asian-prop <https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts/#font-variant-east-asian-prop>


> 
> For ASCII Art, I believe that you just need "monospace" generic font
> family (optionally with "white-space: pre"). Not sure why authors have
> to "workaround" it.
> 
>> Character grid [2] was a related proposal being mentioned by Mr.
>> Ishida in [3], but it was removed from the current CSS Text spec [4].
>> The current CSS Text spec does not specify any feature allow web
>> authors to specify character width directly nor indirectly from, for
>> example, HTML "lang" attribute.
>> 
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-css3-text-20030514/#document-grid <http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-css3-text-20030514/#document-grid>
>> [3] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-cjk/2015OctDec/0017.html <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-cjk/2015OctDec/0017.html>
>> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/ <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/>
> 
> I believe character grid isn't about "to specify character width
> directly or indirectly". It is about a special alignment rule when
> narrow / proporational characters appear in wide / monospace document.
> 
>> Quick web searching shows there wasn't any discussion took place,
>> ever. People have pointed out offline to me that there isn't a lot of
>> interest on this either (particularly because people are able to
>> address the issue are not the user of East Asian languages I guess?)
>> 
>> So here it is. Is there any previous discussion/conclusion I am not
>> aware of? Thanks!
> 
> For the character grid, there was actually some discussion happens in
> TPAC2015. Florian proposed a simplified version of character grid
> during CSSWG meeting there. Minutes can be found here [1] (see "Inline
> Character Grid" section).
> 
> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2015Nov/0264.html <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2015Nov/0264.html>
> 
> - Xidorn