RE: [RFE] small-caps

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Sander Tekelenburg
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 1:00 AM
To: www-style@w3.org
Subject: [RFE] small-caps

<<A recent discussion on <www-html@w3.org> about ABBR led me[*] to believe
it
would be good to add a more explicit explanation of what exactly is meant
with "small-caps" in the CSS specs, at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#propdef-font-variant>.

I expected {font-variant: small-caps} to mean change text to small capitals.
It doesn't. Only lowercase characters are transformed. Capitals remain
captials.

I believe I understand the logic behind that now, but no thanks to the specs
;) I strongly suspect that most people who are not typographers would be
equally confused. And since the reality is that most people who build
websites are not typgraphers, it would help the quality of the Web if the
specs would try to avoid such confusion.

Since there don't seem to be comparable cases in the CSS specs, I think
adding a short note to that particular section would be the appropriate way
to make the specs more clear. Something like:

	"Note that font-variant does <EM>not</EM> automatically imply a
	text-transform. For instance, {font-variant: small caps} only applies to
	lowercase text. To have it apply to capitals, {text-transform: lowercase}
	must be added."

Comments?>>


Users of WYSIWYG word processors, such as Microsoft Word, have has a
small-caps option for years. A word processor uses a small-caps version of a
font if it is available, otherwise it creates one by making small, uppercase
versions of the lowercase characters.

Perhaps the problem with the specification is that it wrongly assumes that
authors are already familiar with this WYSIWYG tool and therefore shouldn't
have any problem understanding how it works.

Simon Jessey
w: http://jessey.net/blog/
e: simon@jessey.net

Received on Monday, 20 January 2003 08:57:25 UTC