[csswg-drafts] Issue: [css-text-4] Clarify text-spacing: punctuation marked as i18n

r12a has just labeled an issue for https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts
 as "i18n":

== [css-text-4] Clarify text-spacing: punctuation ==
French text is commonly marked up with regular spaces (U+0020) where 
the [french typographic 
guidelines](http://unicode.org/udhr/n/notes_fra.html) refered to by 
css-text-4 call for various kinds of non breaking spaces. Sometimes it
 is marked up with the correct (according to that guideline) kind of 
spaces. Sometimes it is marked up with the some other kind of spaces 
(U+00A0 where the guideline says there should be U+202F). Sometimes it
 is marked up with no space in some of these places.

How should `text-spacing: punctuation` react in these various 
situations? the current wording (“is inserted where required”) suggest
 you always add a space (of the right kind), but if there's already 
one there, that doesn't sound helpful.

How about:

1. If there is a U+0020 where the guideline says there should be 
something else, replace the U+0020 with what the guideline says. 
(rationale: U+00A0 and U+202F are hard to type, and people will write 
U+0020 instead out of convenience).
2. If there is a U+00A0, where the guideline says there should be 
U+202F, replace it with U+202F. (rationale: U+202F is harder to type 
than U+00A0 and, and people will write U+00A0 instead out of 
convenience).
3. If there is some other kind of space where the guidelines says 
there should be a U+0020, don't change it. (rationale: spaces other 
than U+0020, and to a limited degree U+00A0 are hard to type, and any 
other kind of space should be assumed to be deliberate).
4. If there is no space where the guidelines says there should be 
U+0020, don't add anything. (rationale: U+0020 is easy to type, and if
 the author wanted a space there, they'd put one. The lack of a space 
is therefore likely to be deliberate, maybe because this is a case of 
unconventional use of the punctuation).
5. If there is no space where the guideline says there should be 
U+00A0 or U+202F, insert the right kind. (rationale: these spaces are 
hard to type, and therefore sometimes skipped. English typing habits 
also lead to people forgetting to type these spaces. And if you really
 did not want these spaces inserted, you can always do `text-spacing: 
none` instead of `text-spacing: punctuation`).
6. if there is a space of any kind where the guideline says there 
should be none, leave it there. (rationale: something where there 
should be nothing is likely to be deliberate)

See https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/318

Received on Thursday, 28 July 2016 10:19:03 UTC