Re: [CSS3 Text] word-break

Hi fantasai,
thank you very much for replying to my comments.

On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:18:53 +1300
fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:

> 
> MURAKAMI Shinyu wrote:
> > In the current CSS3 Text draft spec:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#word-break
> > 
> > Here "normal" means "strict" (disallow line-breaking before small kana 
> > etc.). I think this is not very good because:
> > 
> > 1. "loose" (allow line-breaking before small kana etc.) line-breaking 
> >    restrictions are much more often used than "strict" in current 
> >    Japanese typography.
> >
> > 2. Some CSS implementations (for example, Internet Explorer) already 
> >    implemented the "loose" line-breaking as default behavior. If the 
> >    strict line-breaking becomes the default in the CSS standard, such 
> >    existing implementations will be no longer standard compliant.
> 
> Some other implementations (for example, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari) have
> implemented "strict" as the default behavior. I know that Kaz Otomo, who
> dealt with these issues at Opera, felt that using loose line breaking by
> default would be poor.

Some people feel that the loose line breaking is poor (therefore,
"strict" option is needed) but many other people don't feel so.
The Japanese de facto standard is "loose" line breaking. Most books,
magazines and newspapers adopt the "loose" rule.

See the Japanese Rule Book
文字の組方ルールブック
ISBN4-88888-312-2
http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/discuss/line-breaking/ja/rule-book/6-7.jpg
http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/discuss/line-breaking/ja/rule-book/8-9.jpg

e.
拗音・促音や音引(長音)が行頭にくることは許容し、そのまま行頭に組む。
[Small kanas and prolonged sound mark are allowed to appear at beginning
of line and they are put on the beginning of line as is.]

(footnote)
拗音・促音や音引が行頭にきた場合、発音が割れて読みにくく、体裁上からもよ
くないので、従来、これを避けるために調整を施していた。しかし、調整処理を
避けるために、今日では許容する方向にある。
  平仮名は許容するとしても、片仮名の拗促音は許容しないとする方針もある。
[The appearances of small kanas and prolonged sound mark at beginning of
line are not very beautiful and not very easy to read because of broken
syllables, and therefore they were avoided by adjustment so far. But
today they are more often allowed for avoiding the adjustment processing.
  There is another policy that small hiragana is allowed at beginning of
line but small katakana is not allowed.]



> 
> > My proposal is to separate "strict" from "normal". The new definition is 
> > the following.
> > 
> > Name: word-break
> > Value: normal | strict | keep-all | loose | break-all |  break-strict 
> > Initial: normal 
> > 
> > normal
> >     The UA determines what set of line-breaking restrictions. It may be 
> >     equivalent to either of 'strict' or 'loose'.
> 
> The problem with this is that it's not interoperable. (We want CSS
> implementations to be consistent, which is why 'normal' means one
> thing only, not a choice of two things.)

But the CSS spec already has many UA dependent things such as
font-family (initial value: depends on user agent).
Allowing or disallowing kanas at beginning of line is very trivial thing
for most people, and the font-family, serif or sans-serif (mincho or
gothic, in Japanese typefaces), is much more important.


> 
> I don't think we'll make these suggested changes, but I'll keep them in
> mind if this topic comes up again.
> 
> 
> While we're on this topic, if you could specify what breaks are disallowed
> in strict that are allowed in loose, that would be very helpful information
> to put in the spec. So far I have
> 
>    * breaks before small kana
>    * breaks before iteration marks
>    * breaks before katakana lengthening mark
> 
> I know that various combinations are possible, so I'm leaving this as a
> "recommendation", but I would like to have a reasonable baseline behavior
> described in the spec.


Antenna House XSL Formatter (yes, I am a developper of it) is an
implementation of the XSL-FO spec but it has extension properties 
that come from CSS3 draft specs (including the obsolete CSS3-text CR).

Please see the description of the axf:line-break property:
http://www.antennahouse.com/xslfo/axf4-extension.htm#line-break


> 
> > BTW I think that the "break-strict" might be unnecessary. Such line
> > breaking restrictions are very unusual in the real Japanese typography.
> 
> That was what I expected; it is there for completeness I suppose. Richard
> Ishida complained when I tried to remove it. :)
> 
> 
> Thank you for your comments~
> ~fantasai


Thanks,

-- 
Shinyu Murakami
Antenna House XSL Formatter team
http://www.antennahouse.com

Received on Thursday, 11 January 2007 19:26:04 UTC