Re: [css3-text] Suggestion for text-overflow:shrink

On Oct 14, 2009, at 4:54 PM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com>  
wrote:

> 1) The property is 'overflow'
> 2) new 'overflow' values (I don't know if all values are needed -  
> that's a decision independent from the rest of it):
>
>    overflow:shrink -- shrink but not stretch
>    overflow:stretch -- stretch but not shrink
>    overflow:fit    -- shrink or stretch for exact fit

So, if I have a two word sentence with 'overflow:fit' and it doesn't  
fit naturally, is it wrapped to two lines and then resized, or resized  
so that it all fits on one line?

To me, these values seem more natural as values for 'text-overflow',  
where some text has already been restricted to a single line (due to a  
long word in a small space, or via white-space value), and 'overflow- 
y' is already not involved.

That would have worked for TJ's original use case of getting a line of  
unbroken centered text into a limited width box. It would also work  
for shrinking a long unhyphenated word in a narrow column of text. I  
would go with:

text-overflow: condense; /* squeeze letterforms horizontally or use  
condensed axis of typeface */
text-overflow: shrink; /* reduce font size */
text-overflow: kern-or-track; /* reduce space between letters even if  
they overlap */

A UA that could change the shape of the letters for 'condense' could  
fall back to one of the other two values.

I'm not a big fan of shrinking the text, which seems typographically  
inelegant. It would be pretty horrible in a large paragraph of text.  
They do it in newspaper headlines sometimes, but I think they often  
pick a bolder font to go with the smaller size. I don't think many Web  
pages would have the same sort of constraints and priorities as  
newspapers, where they have to cram a lot of words into narrow columns  
on a limited number of pages. I think 'condense' would be far more  
useful than 'shrink'.

Received on Thursday, 15 October 2009 01:16:55 UTC