Re: [css3-text] letter-spacing at element boundaries

On 02/01/2012 06:49 PM, Alan Stearns wrote:
> On 2/1/12 3:34 PM, "Brad Kemper"<brad.kemper@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> InDesign let's you select some letters in the middle of a word and apply
>> tracking (letter-spacing), and when you do it is only applied between those
>> letters, not at the boundaries. So it is more like what fantasai had specced.
>> Also, if you add tracking to a whole block of text, it does not add space to
>> the very beginning of the first line, nor to the ends of each line. I think
>> that is for the best. One can always add padding or padding to the ends to get
>> the other effect. It would be more annoying to try to remove it via the right
>> amount of negative margin.
>
> It looks to me like letter-spacing and spacing-for-emphasis are really two
> different things. Letter spacing when *not* done for emphasis should only
> work within the element boundary. As Brad notes, people who use
> letter-spacing in English might be surprised and annoyed if it operated
> outside the element where it was applied.
>
> But when spacing is used for emphasis there are a set of rules that
> Christoph outlined that should apply (and perhaps the rule set is language-
> or script-specific?). If spacing-for-emphasis is something CSS should do, I
> think it should be a separate property.

The CSSWG resolved that letter-spacing should not be applied to the edges;
for use cases like emphasis, padding can be used to control spacing at the
edges.

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2012 14:24:27 UTC