Re: [css3-text] script categories, 'bicameral', 'discrete', Unicode links and more

John Hudson, Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:13:09 -0700:
> Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> 
>> If we include history when we evaluate scripts, then it is even 
>> questionable whether Latin and Greek are bicameral scripts since 
>> there are no "bicameralism" in e.g. the Greek sources for the Bible.
> 
> Again I come back to my previous point: if what the spec is trying to 
> address is line-breaking and justification behaviour, coming at it 
> from nominal script categorisation seems like a basic confusion of 
> categories. We can get hung up on all sorts of concepts within 
> grammatology, when really we don't need to if we instead start by 
> defining line-breaking and justification behaviour types, and then 
> look at how these map to individual scripts (with appropriate caveats 
> or exceptions re. language, locale, style). That makes much more 
> sense to me than starting by trying to categorise scripts according 
> to unclear and non-discrete criteria and then trying to map these to 
> line-breaking and justification behaviours. Start with the function.

It is a valid point.

Btw a (modern) area where letter-spacing for justification is not 
recommended (at least it is often difficult and ugly) is inside media 
(such as interactive/social media) where *{font-family:monospaced;} is 
typically the default. E.g. e-mail and (old) type writers. I don't know 
enough about the block scripts, but monospace is a kind of block style, 
it seems ... Also, if justification is enabled while you are typing, 
then the text would "dance" a lot during editing. Which would be 
impractical.

I don't know fractur scripts very well, but I don't think it has/had 
much bold and italics etc - which is something it has in common with 
many (old) monospace fonts and even - to a certain degree -  with 
"screen fonts", such as Chicago and Lucida Grande. Another thing that 
fractur and monospace has in common - if we think about how monospace 
is used in text editors, is lots of use of colors. (E.g. Vim uses 
colors instead of font size etc, in order to signal that <h1>is a 
heading</h1>.) Well, may be this last  point is stretching it a bit, 
but I have on my mind an old Norwegian  almanac which used a bit of 
fracture, with red colour for holy days and sundays etc. We can also 
consider liturgical books/religious service book - they too use lots of 
"color coding" and little of cursive and 
bold and little of justification etc.

So, simply put, when the font/script - doesn't provide/permit the 
normal 2 weights and the normal 2 styles or when something other than 
lack of normal weights/styles causes the letters to become overloaded 
with detailed extra semantics, then authors/rendering tools have to cut 
down on what e.g. letter-spacing can be used for.
-- 
leif halvard silli