font-size-adjust: compensate

Something I really miss about the font handling is related to the 
'font-size-adjust' propery. There are actually 2 things:

1. The 'font-size-adjust' value is function of the 'font-size' and 
the 'x-height' font properties, only. It would be nice if the 
average character width is included in that function, too. I don't 
know if such information comes predefined in the font data but I 
suppose there could be used the width of the space character for the 
font, so there would be no need of excessive computations to be made.

2. There should be included functionallity to compensate for the 
font size depending on the auto-computed 'font-size-adjust' for a 
particular font. What I mean:

Suppose a default font-family/font-size is '16px "Times New Roman"'. 
If one could use:

E {
   font-family: Verdana, inherit;
   font-size-adjust: compensate;
}

the 'E' element to result in a font size such the text would have an 
equal visual weight as the text (font-family/font-size) of the 
parent element. If there's no "Verdana" font on the particular 
system the font-family would not change and the font will stay 
exactly as the parent's one.

Probably the proposed functionality would need a different named 
property because the above 2 points introduce new incompatible 
behavior for the 'font-size-adjust' property. If one introduce a new 
property there could be added even more options, for example:

font-family: "Another", inherit;
font-size-compensate: 1;

should result in a full (100%) "equalization" of the size in respect 
to the parent element's and this element's font weight (not the 
glyph boldnes). If one specify:

font-size-compesate: 0.8;

would result in a 80% "equalization", so if we have:

P { font: 16px "Times New Roman", serif; }
E { font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size-compensate: 0.8; }

<P>
   Parent's text.
   <E>Child element's text.</E>
</P>

where the parent element's font has a smaller, than the child 
element's, 'font-size-adjust' value - the child element's text size 
would stay somewhat larger (80% of the overall equalization) than 
the parent's one. But if the parent/child 'font-size-adjust' 
proportion is inverted (from the initial example) - the child's text 
would stay somewhat smaller than the parent's one.

But I haven't thought over that last part, really.

-- 
Stanimir

Received on Saturday, 24 January 2004 10:29:25 UTC