Re: [css3-text] Hanging Indent

On Friday 2003-08-01 18:14 +0400, Alexander Savenkov wrote:
> First of all, the new syntax is backwards-incompatible. Specifying
> 'text-indent: 3em hanging' in current UAs does nothing, you get no
> indent at all. That's bad.

Introducing a new property for 'text-indent' has the same problem.  So
does introducing any new feature.

> Secondly, if compatibility is unimportant here, the property seems to
> be unfinished. Hanging indents are just one type of indents. Let's
> have a look at the following:

Are any of these types of indents commonly used?  (For the cases where
you indented a whole block, to show that they are used, you should show
that they are used in cases where such an indent is distinguishable from
margin or padding -- i.e., where it inherits.)

> Hence, I suggest to drop the 'hanging' value in favor of the
> 'text-indent'+'margin' combination.

The use of negative 'text-indent' combined with margin has a problem:
'text-indent' is inherited, but 'margin' is not inherited and offsets
descendant blocks.  This is demonstrated in the testcase [1].

See also prior threads on this issue [2].

-David

[1] http://dbaron.org/css/test/2003/03-cambridge/negative-text-indent
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2002Jun/thread.html#8
    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2002Nov/0148.html

-- 
L. David Baron                                <URL: http://dbaron.org/ >

Received on Friday, 1 August 2003 13:22:02 UTC