Re: FW: ruby and rb tag

Koji Ishii, Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:06:49 -0500:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roland Steiner

> On the topic of inter-element whitespace: this is something that I 
> feel is often conveniently ignored with <ruby> (and admittedly 
> doesn't matter so much in CJK), but can lead to ugly results. 
> Consider:
> 
>     <ruby>
>         Cascading <rt>C</rt>
>         Style <rt>S</rt>
>         Sheets <rt>S</rt>
>     </ruby>
> 
> will currently squash everything together to 'CascadingStyleSheets' 
> in the base. IOW, there is no way besides "&nbsp;" or splitting the 
> <ruby> to add spaces between the bases: If one uses "&nbsp;" the 
> space is considered part of the base, which misaligns the text, while 
> splitting the <ruby> will preclude wrapping all the texts into a 
> single bracketed "(CSS)" down the line. <rb> would give one the 
> chance to better delineate what is part of the base and what isn't:
> 
>     <ruby><rb>Cascading</rb><rt>C</rt> <rb>Style</rb><rt>S</rt> 
> <rb>Sheets</rb><rt>S</rt></ruby>
> 
> OTOH if the spaces are preserved (say, by some white-space rule on 
> the <ruby>) outside of the regular bases, what about
> 
>     <ruby><rb>Cascading</rb> <rt>C</rt> / <rb>Style</rb> <rt>S</rt> / 
> <rb>Sheets</rb> <rt>S</rt></ruby>
> 
> (note the spaces between <rb> and <rt>, and the non-space '/' outside 
> both <rb> and <rt>) ?

I wonder why he placed the abbreviation inside <rt> instead of inside 
the base? But apart from that, with regard to the discussion of 
white-space, then I miss that he discusses this option - which doesn't 
work in Webkit [without author CSS], but which works fine in IE:

<ruby>
  <rb>Cascading</rb><rb>Style</rb><rb>Sheets</rb>
  <rt>C</rt><rt>S</rt><rt>S</rt>
</ruby>

Also, he seems to only focus on problems with white-space inside the 
base - but what about the ruby text? After all, it is the ruby text 
that is supposed to be read to - or by - the user.

Question about white-space: Is it possible, at all, to look away from 
the language and script of the ruby base - and the ruby text - when we 
consider how it should be handled?

He also did not discuss <rbc> and <rtc>: Clearly, one could apply white 
space rules to those elements, letting it affect the inter element 
space of <rt> and <rb>. In my view, the inter-elemet space issues - and 
spacing issues in general - could support the inclusion of <rbc> and 
<rtc>.
-- 
Leif Halvard Silli

Received on Wednesday, 25 January 2012 11:46:14 UTC