Re: [CSS3 Text] Thoughts on hanging-punctuation property

On 2007-10-09, fantasai wrote:
> Daniel Aleksandersen wrote:
> > These are the once I would like to see instead:
> > none | [ start || left-edges || edges || end || right-edges ]
> >
> > As everyone can see I use plural in ‘edges’ to clarify that it will
> > apply on multiple edges.
>
> Multiple edges?

Yes, the edge of every line. I call that more than one. Sorry if my English 
is a problem for my you. ;-)

> > I also changed it from start and end to left and right
> > edges; to further clarify which edges will get hanging‐punctuation.
> > Another reason for doing this is that ‘left hanging‐punctuation’ is a
> > common term in typography.
>
> The reason for using 'start' and 'end' instead of 'left' and 'right' is
> that it automatically works correctly both for right-to-left and
> left-to-right scripts.

Yes. I actually understood there was a internationalisation reason. But I 
still thinks using left and right is better. It is basically the same 
thing. But since CSS addresses almost every other direction using left and 
right, I though it was best to use it here to. And as I said, it makes 
things more simple.

> > Further more I added ‘edges’—equal to hanging-punctuation:
> > left-edges right-edges; but faster to write—for simplicity.
>
> I'm not convinced that this is really necessary; I wouldn't expect to
> set this more than once or twice per style sheet. Also, I'm not familiar
> with any use of "left-edge" hanging punctuation.

See below illustrations.

> > And there is a really To answer a question on the page ‘Which marks are
> > affected?‘: All characters from the General, and Supplemental
> > Punctuation blocks as per the Unicode standard must appear as hanging.
> > The most correct method is to have any punctuation appear as hanging;
> > including ( [ . - and anything else. The only exceptions would POSSIBLY
> > be U+2052 COMMERCIAL MINUS SIGN and any other punctuation mark that
> > appears with U+20 SPACE—or any other space character—on both sides.
>
> I'm a bit skeptical about applying this to *all* punctuation. I imagine
> all opening/closing punctuation would be affected on 'start' and 'end',
> and all stops and maybe hyphens on 'end-edge', but carets and asterisks?

If you look trough the two character blocks I proposed—try using 
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm—you will see that 
it makes sense for almost every character. Except the U+2052 COMMERCIAL 
MINUS SIGN and other glyphs that appear separated from other characters 
using U+20 SPACE and other spacing characters.

> Can you post examples (e.g. scans) of where this is applied to other
> punctuation, or where "left-edge" ('start-edge') hanging punctuation is
> used?

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Illustrator/13.0/images/tp_36.png
Left hanging punctuation to the right. (Image courtesy of Adobe.)

http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/120/
Showing left (first illustration) and right (second illustration) hanging 
punctuation to the right. Try hovering the two images! (Images courtesy of 
Artemy Lebedev.)
-- 
Daniel Aleksandersen

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2007 09:52:16 UTC