Re: WD-css3-text-20021024 substantive comments

Etan Wexler wrote:
> Following are comments on the Working Draft, "CSS3 module:
> text", <http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-text-20021024>.
> 
> 4.2. Justification: the 'text-justify' property
> 
> 
> "It affects the text layout only if 'text-align' is set to
> 'justify'. That way, UA's that do not support this property will
> still render the text as fully justified"
> 
> If the 'text-justify' values were allowed for 'text-align' as
> meaning "justify in this manner", an extra declaration could be
> used for fallback.  This would mean writing the following, for
> example.
> 
>     text-align: justify;
>     text-align: newspaper;
> 
> That would be instead of the following.
> 
>     text-align: justify;
>     text-justify: newspaper;
> 
> This presents a trivial difference to the author (the reduction
> in length slightly favoring my proposal).  Where the difference
> really matters is in implementations, which would not have to
> carry an extra property on each element.

text-justify is inherited separately from text-align.
The way it is now, I could specify "text-justify: newspaper"
on the root element, and every element that has "text-align:
justify" will use newspaper justification, even if its parent
was "text-align: right". I won't have to specify the specific
type of justification on anything else, so the currently-
defined system is actually shorter for the author.

> 7. Text Wrapping, White-space Control and Text Overflow
> 
> 
> The focus on line feed (U+000A) as the only line break character
> is specific to XML, to the detriment of CSS.  Choosing the word
> "linefeed" for property names is one thing; a slight misnomer
> can be accomodated.  Limiting implementation behavior to dealing
> with line feed only is another thing, and a bad one at that.

Agreed. An implementation may internally convert all newlines
to linefeeds if it chooses to, but there's no reason for CSS
to mandate this.

BTW, using "newline" instead of "linefeed" for property names
would be more inclusive, and it's not any more esoteric.

~fantasai

Received on Sunday, 15 December 2002 05:14:33 UTC