Re: Kerning in latest CSS3 draft

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 12:36 AM, John Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> Thomas Phinney wrote:
>
>> I would like to circle back on this, and suggest that there needs to
>> be some kind of explicitly "on" option as well. Maybe I missed it in
>> the previous lengthy discussion, but if you tell me that Firefox
>> will interpret "font-kerning:normal" differently than it currently
>> "text-rendering:auto" that would alleviate my concern.
>>
>> As an author, I want to be able to use a setting that tells apps
>> such as Firefox that I am serious about wanting kerning on, not just
>> at its discretion (for example, for text that's bigger than regular
>> body text).
>
> Right, I think text layout should be done using OpenType defaults
> (i.e. kerning on, common ligatures enabled, etc.) with
> author-controlled ways of modifying those defaults.
>
> I'm going to add a concise explanation of this, that's what I meant by
> the "still to be done" item below:
>
>> Still in progress:
>>   - Better wording describing OpenType default behavior, including kerning

Right, then the two settings are enough.

> I'd actually prefer to refer to the OpenType spec directly as the
> normative reference for what these defaults are but that spec is
> sometimes unclear about whether a given feature is enabled by default
> or not.  For example, are old-style figures enabled or not by default?
> My reasonable guess is they're not (that makes more sense) but the
> OpenType spec just says "Users can switch between the lining and
> oldstyle sets by turning this feature on or off."
>
> I think that may be a bug in the spec, if a designer uses old-style
> figures as the default glyphs for numerals then the statement above
> will be incorrect.

You're correct, that's a bug in the OT spec. It would be more accurate
if it said something like: "Users can override the default figures
with oldstyle figures by turning this feature on. Default figures are
commonly (but not necessarily) lining figures."

Thanks,

T

-- 
"The rat's perturbed; it must sense nanobots! Code grey! We have a
Helvetica scenario!" — http://xkcd.com/683/

Received on Friday, 26 March 2010 08:01:42 UTC