Re: [css3-fonts] Addition of font-size: xxx-large

On Wednesday 2012-04-18 08:32 -0700, Ryosuke Niwa wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:26 AM, Kang-Hao (Kenny) Lu <
> kennyluck@csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> > (12/04/18 15:12), Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> >
> As another idea: always output with the 'rem' unit when "styleWithCSS"
> > is on. This is as you said, relying on the 'font-size' of the root
> > element being fixed, but I think this is better than adding a value
> > that's mostly useless.
> >
> 
> That won't work because rem isn't supported by old browsers and mail
> clients. In editing, simply generating contents that can be rendered by
> yourself isn't good enough. It needs to be renderable by other browsers.

So as has already been pointed out, this seems to defeat the
argument that an xxx-large value would be useful.

One could in theory imagine a new unit, say 'uem', that's like 'rem'
except it's based on the user's default font size preference (i.e.,
doesn't include author changes that apply to the root element).

However, I tend to think that's probably not the best of ideas,
since I think the whole idea of user font size preferences has
failed, for two reasons:

 * First, on many pages, authors specify fixed font sizes and ignore
   the user's preferences.  This means that when the user tries to
   adjust the preference by looking at such a page, the adjustment
   appears to do nothing.

 * Second, many other pages make assumptions about the user's
   default font size being a specific value or within a narrow range
   of values.  On these pages, changing the user font size
   preference from its default value can cause overlap, hidden
   content, or other problems.

I tend to think that the current font size preference mechanism
should be replaced by:

 * Making the current default values of font sizes the only values.

 * Honoring any user font size preferences (whether they're fixed
   values, minimum constraints, or range constraints) by zooming the
   entire page (i.e., displaying the page at zoom factor f involves
   laying out the page as though the viewport had been scaled by 1/f
   and then scaling the resulting display back up).

This approach would make the xx-small to xx-large keywords
equivalent to pixel font sizes.

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                           http://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂