Re: Initial values for widows and orphans

Dean Jackson <dino@apple.com>  wrote on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:34:25 +1100

> I just added support for 'widows' and 'orphans' to WebKit [1].

> Unfortunately, in order to not break existing content, I couldn't use
the > specified initial values of 2. Instead I had to go against the
spec and
> accept a value of 'auto' and have that be the initial value. In WebKit,
> this means do nothing (do not try to avoid widows or orphans).

> What was the reasoning behind having such initial values? [2] [3]

> [1] http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/137200
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-page/#breaks-inside
> [3] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-page/#breaks-inside


Dean,

I do not understand why Webkit can not implement orphans and widows
according to CSS2.1 specification.

I do not understand why you say that it would break existing content.

If webkit does not implement orphans and widows with a default, initial
value of 2, then it will break web-standards-compliant content,
web-interoperability and cross-browser-compatibility. Now and later.

Regarding "to not break existing content", I am convinced that a very wide
majority of existing web content do not use, do not declare 'widows' and
'orphans'.

Gérard
-- 
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Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 23:22:13 UTC