Re: Will spacing issue after italics EVER be addressed?

Hi Bonnie Granat,

I'm sorry, that you got the feeling, no one cares about your issue. It's
not your fault. Therefore I want to give you a few aspects to let you
understand the problem.

The issue you describe is a problem of the implementation of the
rendering software (say: of each individual browser application), not of
any standard. Therefore you should send it to the Internet Explorer team
of Microsoft (somewhere around of
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/default.mspx) and the
Mozilla Firefox team of the Mozilla project
(news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.layout). This was the
basic message of the previous postings.

Now we know, that the browser products are imperfect as to the rendering
of italic text. We could all jump into it now and fill bugs hoping the
programmers will correct the issue. However there are many problems
regarding the rendering of web pages. Many parts of CSS are not fully or
correctly implemented in most browsers - and this since years. Making
standard conform web pages that render on most browsers in the same way
has really been a big effort in the past (thus many web developer didn't
do that). -- This is the reason, why probably many thought: yet another
rendering problem, and don't care further.

In fact, many probably consider it as a _minor_ problem, in contrast to
your opinion. As someone pointed out, type setting is even done bad in
Word, when comparing it with LaTeX or DTP applications. But no one
cares. And I think only few people miss the space after italic letters,
as you do. They see it, if you give them both variants and ask them,
what they like more. However if you serve them only the bad one, they
won't claim it.

Thus I think, your problem is valid, the rendering of common browsers is
bad as to the spacing around italic letters. However the problem is
minor compared to other browser problems. Thus it won't receive a high
priority.

I hope, this reconciles you a bit with our list.

Best regards, Simon


P.S.: Sorry, the first message went directly to Bonnie Granat, instead
to the list.



Bonnie Granat wrote:

>Mikko wrote:
>
>To sum all of this: it's up to the text rendering subsystem to 
>correctly render the requested text. If it isn't up to the task, 
>there's nothing the content author can do to fix the problem. This 
>isn't something that is broken because of HTML or CSS spec.
>
>-------------
>
>OK. If nobody's going to do anything about this problem, then perhaps all of
>the elementary tutorials in HTML ought to mention it when the <em> or <i>
>tags are first introduced.
>
>I'm an end user of HTML. I cannot understand all the comments that have been
>made about where responsibility for this actually lies. 
>
>Can someone here pass along the problem statement to the appropriate party?
>
>My question is why this issue is viewed as so unimportant as to have not
>been addressed thus far by the appropriate parties.
>
>There are vast amounts of scientific, medical, and scholarly text on the Web
>in websites, journal articles, and so forth that make extensive use of
>italicized words and phrases. 
>
>It just seems like so basic an issue to me.
>
>Thanks.
>
>
>Bonnie Granat
>http://www.GranatEdit.com
>
>
>Mikko wrote:
>
>To sum all of this: it's up to the text rendering subsystem to 
>correctly render the requested text. If it isn't up to the task, 
>there's nothing the content author can do to fix the problem. This 
>isn't something that is broken because of HTML or CSS spec.
>
>-------------
>
>OK. If nobody's going to do anything about this problem, then perhaps all of
>the elementary tutorials in HTML ought to mention it when the <em> or <i>
>tags are first introduced.
>
>I'm an end user of HTML. I cannot understand all the comments that have been
>made about where responsibility for this actually lies. 
>
>Can someone here pass along the problem statement to the appropriate party?
>
>My question is why this issue is viewed as so unimportant as to have not
>been addressed thus far by the appropriate parties.
>
>There are vast amounts of scientific, medical, and scholarly text on the Web
>in websites, journal articles, and so forth that make extensive use of
>italicized words and phrases. 
>
>It just seems like so basic an issue to me.
>
>Thanks.
>
>
>Bonnie Granat
>http://www.GranatEdit.com
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>

Received on Wednesday, 11 January 2006 18:17:59 UTC