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Re: [css3-text] Capital spacing

From: Bert Bos <bert@w3.org>
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 17:38:49 +0200
Message-ID: <16659.42505.884013.479149@lanalana.inria.fr>
To: Etan Wexler <ewexler@stickdog.com>
Cc: www-style@w3.org, Michel Suignard <michelsu@microsoft.com>, Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>

Etan Wexler writes:
> 
> Given the computed properties
> 
>      { text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: normal },
> 
> may a user agent apply all-caps spacing between grapheme clusters? Does 
> the permission to do so depend on the fonts' provision of such metrics? 

I think you have to explain a bit more. If the text contains a word
like "valley" and 'text-transform' turns it into "VALLEY", it seems to
me quite obvious that the kerning between the V and the A should be
whatever the font says it should be for V and A, not what it says for
v and a. It would look rather ugly otherwise.

> May a user agent, in the absence of all-caps tracking metrics, adjust 
> the inter-grapheme-cluster spacing based on heuristics?

I believe that is what is supposed to happen if you set 'kerning-mode:
contextual'. The definition of 'kerning-mode' says that 'contextual'
is not based on font information. This may be a bit confusing, since
some fonts in fact have built-in kerning rules that are also called
"contextual kerning rules." (But then, how many people know that?)



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Friday, 6 August 2004 11:40:26 UTC

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