Re: Another cut on the Character-Transform Property

Steve's proposal seems sound. But I don't think his names are much better
than the original: those names tell me even less about what the feature
might do, and like the original name could apply to any feature. Maybe
"glyph-position" or perhaps "text-position"?

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 6:36 PM, Stephen Zilles <szilles@adobe.com> wrote:

>  John,
>
>   Per my action item from the CSS F2F meeting, I suggest the following
> change to  text of 6.2
>
> The current description (March 26) is:
> 6.2 Positional character forms: the character-transform<http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/#propdef-character-transform>property
>
> Name:
>
> character-transform
>
> Value:
>
> normal | subscript | superscript | ordinal
>
> Initial:
>
> normal
>
> Applies to:
>
> all elements
>
> Inherited:
>
> yes
>
> Percentages:
>
> N/A
>
> Media:
>
> visual
>
> Computed value:
>
> as specified
>
> The values ‘subscript’, ‘superscript’ and ‘ordinal’ imply the appropriate
> variant glyph is displayed when available in the font (OpenType features: subs,
> supr, ordn). When a variant glyph is not available, a simulated version is
> synthesized using a reduced form of the default glyph. Normal implies use of
> the default glyph at normal size. When the value is anything other than ‘
> normal’, the font-size and vertical-align properties are set to ‘inherit’.
>
> Description I would change the semantic paragraph to read as follows:
>
> The values ‘subscript’, ‘superscript’ and ‘ordinal’ imply the appropriate
> variant glyph is displayed when available in the font (OpenType features: subs,
> supr, ordn). These variant glyphs are displayed using the font-size and
> vertical-align properties of the parent of the element to which
> ‘character-transform’ applies. When a variant glyph is not available, the
> font-size and vertical-align properties on the affected element are used to
> scale and position the normal glyph for the given code point. The value ‘
> normal’ always displays the normal glyph for each code point at the
> content of that element. using the font-size and vertical-align properties
> on that element.
>
> This approach does not require making character-transform into something
> like a shorthand, but not quite. It also allows the font-size and
> verticial-align values to be propogated to nested super-(or sub-)scripts so
> that they decrease in size and stack correctly. It also means that the
> behavior of current content (under the ‘normal’ value) does not change and
> that things like images in the content of the element affected by
> character-transform are made to appear as super-(or sub-)scripts although
> they may not line up with the other glyphs unless they are sized
> appropriately.
>
>
>
> Finally, I am not entirely happy with the name “character-transform”. It is
> not the character that is transformed; if anything is transformed it is the
> glyph. How about names like, ‘use-font-feature’ or ‘use-font’ or
> ‘use-feature’?
>
>
>
> Steve Zilles
>
>
>



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