Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] text-wrap: pretty (Issue #864)

While we recognize that the author pain points this is designed to solve are real and prominent, we still have several concerns about this solution, both in terms of its current definition, and its timing.
  
In general, shipping high level features is a good idea when 
a) we have a good idea of what a good solution to author needs would be (either by first shipping low level features and observing how they are used OR because the solution is so obvious that this step is not needed) or
b) the corresponding low-level features would be very tedious to use to produce the same result.
  
In this case, neither of these appear to be true: we do *not* have a good sense of what `text-wrap: pretty` should end up doing in the end, and it currently only corresponds to two very specific features, that would not be tedious to set individually.
  
[One author's reaction](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/3473#issuecomment-2032718416) to this feature appears to validate this concern: they wanted control over orphans and are frustrated they have to accept re-hyphenation to get it.

Given this, we are concerned that the behavior of this feature will need to change a lot over time, and that after a certain amount of adoption, those changes will either break web compatibility, or will require a high enough performance cost that browsers won't be able to ship them. We encourage the CSSWG to:
  
1. keep working to expose the lower-level features so authors can request them directly (e.g. if their intent is to avoid orphans, they should be able to express this without having to resort to a feature that combines it with other things).
2. work on a plan to ensure that implementations can eventually ship a truly-pretty line-wrapping algorithm even if that turns out to be expensive.
3. consider whether the completely open-ended specification for `text-wrap: pretty` ("[Specifies the UA should bias for better layout over speed, and is expected to consider multiple lines](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-4/#valdef-text-wrap-style-pretty)") was the right way to get engines to ship evolvable and eventually-compatible implementations.

We think the CSSWG is the right place to pursue those goals and that parallel discussion within the TAG won't help anyone. Thus, we're closing this as `Resolution: unsatisfied` with the acknowledgement that solving the above problems would likely turn this into a `satisfied` resolution.

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Received on Wednesday, 4 September 2024 21:15:17 UTC