Re: Proposal for clipping background images to foreground text

On Apr 4, 2008, at 10:29 AM, Brad Kemper wrote:

>
> On Apr 3, 2008, at 10:06 PM, fantasai wrote:
>> David Hyatt wrote:
>>> Yeah, I think a new property like text-fill (that does most of  
>>> what backgrounds do) might be better than what I've implemented.   
>>> In WebKit, I've already split text drawing into filling and  
>>> stroking (with a separate text-fill-color property).  If that fill  
>>> color became part of a larger shorthand, that might work.
>>
>> Well, the point of the separate color is for it to behave as a  
>> fallback
>> if the image fails to load. text-fill-color implies to me that the  
>> color
>> will always be applied.
>
> With backgrounds, it is a fallback if the image isn't available, or  
> it can show in places where there is no image (due to no-repeat, for  
> instance, or partial image transparency.
>
> I don't see any reason for there not to be a a "text-fill" shorthand  
> that combines "text-fill-color", "text-fill-image", text-image- 
> position", "text-fill-repeat", and "text-fill-attachment". Basically  
> a direct equivalent of background. You could still have "color" as a  
> fallback for UAs that didn't support "text-fill". Am I missing  
> something?
>

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting when I brought up text-fill-color.   
It would serve as a fallback color inside a text-fill shorthand just  
as background-color does inside a background shorthand.

> I don't think I would want it to apply to the text-shadow though.  
> That would be really inconsistent with the way color normally works  
> on text.

Yes, applying to the shadow would make no sense if the image pattern  
became the actual contents of the fill.  (You'd see those contents  
cast a shadow when painted of course, but that's a different effect  
when compared to having the shadow participate as part of a mask,  
which is what the background-clip: text option does.)

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)