Re: text-overflow: ellipsis

James Elmore wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 5, 2008, at 2:25 PM, Christoph Päper wrote:
>
>>
>> Bert Bos:
>>>
>>>     +----------------+
>>>     |   Here is a rig|ht-aligned text
>>>     +----------------+
>>>
>>>     +----------------+
>>>     |   Here is a... |
>>>     +----------------+
>>>
>>> Another subtle point is that the ellipsis on the first line should 
>>> be after the "a" and not after the space. The space is not really a 
>>> character (except in preformatted text), but a piece of mark-up that 
>>> creates a word separator.
>>
>> This may be the case in English (typography) and probably others, but 
>> elsewhere, e.g. in German, an ellipsis adjoined to a letter or 
>> (partial) word indicates truncation of the word, whereas truncation 
>> of a sentence was shown by an ellipsis after a space (after a word or 
>> mark).
>>
>
> That is something I want to interject in this discussion. While not an 
> expert in typography, I am aware that an ellipsis may fulfill several 
> functions. As Christoph pointed out, two of those functions are: 
> indicating missing words and indicating missing letters. (I am 
> speaking about English, and probably other Western languages as well 
> in these cases.) If there is a space before the ellipsis, the 
> preceding is a complete word and the removed chunks are probably words 
> as well. If there is no space before the dots, the missing pieces are 
> assumed to be letters and a complete word is NOT the last thing on the 
> line (before the dots).
>
> Others in this thread have indicated that there needs to be some way 
> to show missing / overflow pieces which may not be either letters or 
> words. Is there a standard way to show missing lines of text? (I can't 
> remember exactly who, but one responder suggested using "V V V" if 
> lines [below] are truncated by overflow.) There have also been a few 
> indications that some designers would like to use something like 
> ellipsis equivalents when blocks (images, etc.) overflow. I have seen 
> this happen a few times and it is reasonably clear what is missing.
>
>
> So, to have a complete picture of what the proposal for ellipsis 
> entails, I want to ask:
>
> Is this for overflowing letters only?
>
> Can the overflow / truncation be different if the boundary is at a 
> word rather than a letter?
>
> Is there a way to request that the overflow split on word boundaries?
>
> Are there differences for languages which flow in other directions and 
> which stack line boxes differently, and which have different 
> word-break indicators (something other than a space)?
>
> Does this discussion include using ellipses, or another indicator, for 
> clipped blocks or for overflowed line boxes. It makes sense to me, but 
> perhaps not to everyone, that an ellipsis-like symbol can be used to 
> indicate clipped / overflowing elements other than letters and words. 
> Are there objections to this possibility? Or voices in its favor?
>
> For those who have already added to this thread -- thank you all for 
> your well organized comments. This is one of the best ordered and most 
> erudite threads I have read in ages.
>
First of all:

text-overflow:ellipsis works in conjunction with white-space:nowrap and 
overflow-x:hidden.
So ellipsis appear only when paragraph is rendered as a single line and 
that line overflows.
That is typical ellipsis rendering condition in UI.

Second:

UA shall show so called tooltip when pointer is over such element.
Like here: http://terrainformatica.com/w3/overflow-ellipsis.png
(Mouse pointer is over the "Antigua and Barbuda" cell)

--
Andrew Fedoniouk.

http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 23:28:05 UTC