Re: [CSS] font-size-adjust curiosity

John Hudson wrote:

> > No, fallback fonts are sized differently depending upon the ratio of
> > their x-height to em size, as specified in the description of the
> > font-size-adjust property. The size is determined by a combination
> > of 'font-size' and 'font-size-adjust'. The reason for keeping
> > x-height constant is less about being "visually more appealing" than
> > it is about readability at small sizes, where the x-height is a
> > determining factor.
> 
> Thinking about this, and about the other font-size-adjust thread, I'm
> struck that as currently spec'd it is a peculiarly Latin-centric --
> or, at least, Euro-centric -- feature, which may be because it relies
> on similarly Latin-centric font metrics (the sxHeight field in the
> OS/2 table).
> 
> I can think of parallel situations in which, again for both aestheric
> and readability reasons, one might want to, say, adjust the size of
> fallback Hindi fonts to match the head line height of the preferred
> font, or match some aspect of differing Arabic fonts (the latter
> mighty be particularly welcome, given how widely divergent the scaling
> of Arabic fonts can be).

I agree that this functionality would be useful but I don't think it
negates the utility of font-size-adjust.  Others have pointed this out
before (Behdad [1] and Peter Constable [2]).  I think that coming up
some form of per-script sizing factor is a reasonable addition but I
think we should consider it for CSS4 Fonts, rather than at this level.

JH

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Aug/0197.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011May/0049.html

Received on Wednesday, 7 March 2012 01:13:23 UTC