RE: [css3-writing-modes] text-orientation: upright (was RE: Minutes and Resolutions 2011-07-13

See comments below

Steve Zilles

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf
> Of Koji Ishii
> Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:37 PM
[SZ] [SNIP]
> What I want to writing-modes level 3 is just a good default behavior, and
> I'd like it be close to what Windows and MacOS X Lion[4] does today. That
> gives consistent behavior with other applications, and matches to what
> native East Asians have been used to. Within the proposals currently
> discussed -- the current ED, surrounding characters, bidi-style resolution,
> script markup -- I think the current ED is the closest to the goal. It is
> also the closest to the original requirements came from Michel if I
> understand that correctly.
> 
> So, if we were going to discuss how to improve 'text-orientation: upright'
> behavior, I'd like to know what use cases we're trying to solve. If the use
> case is advanced enough to punt to level 4, I'd like to keep the one
> defined in the current ED.
> 
> I appreciate discussions to make it clearer to readers and easier to read,
> but I don't want advanced features. We all know a lot of people are waiting
> for this spec to be done, right?

[SZ] The problem is that unlike the specifications for explicit values, the default or "initial" value for a property cannot change if backward compatibility is to be preserved; that is why it is important to get it right from the beginning. There is no CSS4 new default value. It is certainly possible to introduce new explicit values that fix problems with 'vertical-rotate', the initial value for 'text-orientation' in CSS4, but if the default value has a problem it will stay there forever. It is also possible to introduce a new property with a new default/initial value, but that does not seem like a good choice either. That is why I, at least, am concerned about having a clear and useful definition of 'vertical-rotate'

On the question of "requirements" for 'text-orientation' default. The original one was to do as much of the "right thing" as possible without requiring explicit markup. The original model was what Microsoft Word did without markup.

I think we need to answer the questions that were raised in the Wednesday discussion before we can decide on what the default/initial value is to be.

Steve Z.

Received on Friday, 15 July 2011 01:22:10 UTC