Re: [css3-fonts] Names of 'font-variant-*' properties and relationships to OT features

On 28/05/12 7:37 PM, John Daggett wrote:

> Regarding your proposal to tie each feature to a specific set of 
> characters, while many of these features generally apply to a limited 
> range of characters, type designers often include other characters in 
> the set of characters affected by a given feature for better visual 
> representation. For example, the small-caps feature may affect 
> surrounding punctuation, the type designer may design alternate 
> punctuation just for small-cap text runs. The small-caps feature 
> behaves as a type designer thinks it should for their design, CSS is 
> not dictating what it should and shouldn't be for all cases.

I'm absolutely in agreement with John here. Trying to restrict layout 
features to specific sets of characters would create many problems. It 
took us over a decade to get software developers to stop making 
assumptions about what kind of lookup types would be associated with 
particular features in fonts; the last thing we want is assumptions made 
about to what characters features apply.

JH

Received on Tuesday, 29 May 2012 02:52:09 UTC