Re: [CSS3 Text] Re: controlling tab size

Niklas Åkerlund wrote:
>  > From: James Justin Harrell <herorev@yahoo.com 
>  >
>  > 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....
> ...

Note that the default tab stop is defined as 8ch, not 8em.. 8em is certainly
much too large...

The WG discussed tab stops awhile ago: specifically whether to allow the UA
to choose arbitrary tab stops, on the 14 June 2005. We decided not to make
that change.

My position on this issue is that I don't mind the *size* of tabs being
configurable. However I do object to making the position of tabs configurable.
I think that is better handled by margins, padding, tables, or even a separate
property that shifts the element to a fixed position but does not use or
require an actual tab character in the document source.

For CSS3 Text, if an implementor wants to implement a 'tab-size' property or
to make the tab size configurable via controls in the browser UI, I'm fine
with adding this capability to CSS as long as the working group doesn't object.
However, as I don't consider this particularly important for most web pages, I
won't add it unless an implementor steps up and says "I'm going to implement
this, please put it in the spec."

~fantasai

Received on Friday, 3 August 2007 03:38:42 UTC