[CSS3 Text] Re: controlling tab size

> From: James Justin Harrell <herorev@yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:47:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To: www-style@w3.org
> Message-ID: <673726.63129.qm@web50102.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
>
> I know that many people dislike tabs, but some people still find them
valuable. I personally
> prefer tabs over spaces for indenting source code because it is more
semantic and easier to change
> how wide the indentions are. I've had a lot of problems copying between
files that used a
> different number of spaces for indentions.
>
> CCS3 Text currently says: A tab (U+0009) is rendered as a horizontal shift
that lines up the start
> edge of the next glyph with the next tab stop. Tab stops occur at points
that are multiples of 8
> times the width of a space (U+0020) rendered in the block's font from the
block's starting content
> edge.
>
> Is there any hope of getting a property to control how far apart the tab
stops are? The default
> 8em is much wider than I prefer. I would really appreciate a property like
"tab-size" to control
> this.
>
> tab-size: 4em;

I managed to dig this up in the archive, because to me this really is an
issue. And nothing seems to have come out of it. yet....

In §3.2. The White Space Processing Rules, of CSS3 Text, the specs still
says:

"A tab (U+0009) is rendered as a horizontal shift that lines up the start
edge of the next glyph with the next tab stop. Tab stops occur at points
that are multiples of 8 times the width of a space (U+0020) rendered in the
block's font from the block's starting content edge."

If you bother to have word-spacing and line heights, there should be a way
to set the tab size. To me, this basic feature is much more important than
such things as text decorations or underline style and color. Not that those
aren't fun to play with...

Niklas Åkerlund