[css-text-3] Rethink overflow-wrap: break-spaces

[This is notes from a conversation with Florian.]

Trailing spaces are confusing, let's start from the beginning to make sure we got the right thing.

What's the goal?
-> There exists a mode where editing is sane.

Corollaries:

   * The caret moves forward when you insert characters (including spaces),
     and when you shift the caret forward through the text, it visibly moves;
     so we can't be collapsing spaces (visually, logically, or otherwise).

   * The caret is always visible, even if the containing block clips.

   * If you have asked for wrapping, and there is any break opportunity,
     there is no overflow.

   * If you are writing typical single-space-separated text with wrapping,
     no line wraps so that it begins with a space.

   * If there is room for at least one character in the line, and
     'overflow-wrap: break-word' is on, you don't want overflow.

   * If you turn off editing, or load in a different implementation,
     the line breaks don't change.

Tangent issue:

   * If sequences of spaces can break, and spaces can't hang, the shrinkwrap
     sizes should be taking this into account. -> overflow-wrap is the wrong
     property

Previous discussions:

   * NYC https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2015May/0281.html
   * Sydney https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2016Mar/0352.html
   * SF https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2016Jun/0019.html

   SF minutes totally unclear on why break-spaces was moved to overflow-wrap

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 5 March 2018 15:30:22 UTC