Re: line-height limitations

On Mar 16, 2011, at 5:19 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 16, 2011, at 4:59 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mar 16, 2011, at 1:56 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 2011/3/16 Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com>:
>>>>>> How about something that said not to take the glyph size and font leading
>>>>>> into account at all for line box height calculation, unless it us the only
>>>>>> thing on the line and needs to be an input into line-height (for em line
>>>>>> height, for example). Then it could also maybe solve the problem of
>>>>>> vertical-align:sup creating a big gap between two lines.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nah, you want it to take the height of the large letter into account,
>>>>> just not the nonexistent descender.
>>>> 
>>>> You presume to know what I want?
>>>> 
>>>> First lines are not the only lines to get messed up in spite of consistent line-heights on the whole block.
>>> 
>>> I presume to know what *Hyatt* wants, and your solution was
>>> insufficient for that for the reason I mentioned.
>>> 
>>> (Also, that was a general "you", not a specific "you as in Brad".  Sorry.)
>> 
>> It was my email that you replied to and said "no" to. It was insufficient for the reason I mentioned.
> 
> ...yes?  You were offering up a solution to Hyatt's problem, unless I
> massively misread your email.  

I guess you did then. What I was trying to suggest was that there may be a property that not only fixed the very limited and specific problem with first lines, where a large letter could lead to unpredictable spacing of the baseline, but that this new property could also lead to more predictable and tighter controlling of all baselines in a text block.  


> I pointed out how your proposed
> solution was insufficient to solve the problem, because it would lead
> to the the line-height calculations completely ignoring the fact that
> the first letter was extra-large, which means that the first letter
> might be smushed up against or overlap the padding/border of the
> element.

A little extra margin or padding would prevent visual overlaps of the first line. Or maybe use padding on :first-line or something. What I want is something more like the way traditional typesetting handles leading, where it is an exact measurement of baseline to baseline, and the "author" (the person speccing the typesetting he wants) has the responsibility to pick something appropriate. Dave's problem does not occur in traditional typesetting (or even, I dare say, in applications such as Adobe InDesign). This is not an insurmountable thing to do, that you reject so quickly.

Received on Thursday, 17 March 2011 02:28:00 UTC