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

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?

Thank you for your support in advance.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#default-stylesheet
[2] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#word-break
[3] http://unicode.org/reports/tr14/#Examples
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012May/0132.html

Regards,
Koji

Received on Friday, 4 May 2012 18:50:30 UTC