RE: [css3-fonts] font-variant-numeric

On March 24, 2010 5:36 AM John Daggett wrote:
> 
> John Hudson wrote:
> 
> > On the subject of terminology in
> >    http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/#font-variant-numeric-prop

> >
> > I find the use of the term 'font rendering' in this document
> > unfortunate, and would like to request that it be changed. For font
> > developers -- who spend a lot of time these days talking about what
> > happens to text on screen -- rendering refers to glyph painting
> > (typically some form of rasterisation). Hence, we talk about e.g.
> > different kinds of rendering engines and models, Apple Quartz
> rendering
> > vs. Microsoft ClearType rendering, hinting for different rendering
> > environments, etc.
> >
> > The kind of glyph substitution and positioning behaviours and
> properties
> > described in the draft document are what we would call text layout,
> not
> > font rendering.
> 
> Yeah, I struggled over what term to use here, "font rendering" was by
> no means the ideal term.
> 
> What I've called "font rendering properties" are properties not used
> for selecting a face within a family but instead properties applied
> when picking glyphs to display.  "Font feature properties" is probably
> what I should use instead.
> 

Would the generic term "glyph substitution" work (instead of font rendering) to describe the effect of font features and the font-variant properties? 

In general I agree with John Hudson, I think that the term "rendering" in the document is overused and has different meanings in different contexts. I'd reserve using it to mean "rasterization of glyphs", and would like to suggest using various alternatives, e.g.:

font rendering properties -> font feature selection properties;
consistent rendering across user agents -> consistent results across user agents;
language-specific rendering -> language-specific processing;
Enables/Disables rendering of ... -> Enables/Disables selection of ...


> In places where rendering is discussed, maybe "text rendering" rather
> than "font rendering" would be sufficiently distinct not to cause
> confusion?

I think text rendering could be used where applicable but you may also want to consider using text layout, text shaping and/or glyph positioning, depending on a context.

Regards,
Vladimir

Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 15:37:08 UTC