Re: [CSSWG] Minutes Telecon 2013-04-10

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 9:19 PM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
>   liam: This proposal is to let an author/script say "this piece of text
>         is going to be interactively edited"...
>   liam: I imagine a print processor would set this to "batch" - not edited.
>   liam: You care about editted or not because if you insert a word in the
>         middle of a paragraph, and you use a multi-line linebreaking algo,
>         your text will reflow and your insertion point might move up or
>         down a line.
>   liam: Some programs handle this by only reflowing when you finish editing,
>         but it's ugly in the meantime.  It's a problem with a long history.
>   liam: Two parts of this proposal:
>   liam: 1) Say your intent, interactive or batch.
>   liam: 2) Second, experimentally, say what algorithm to use.
...

I just want to say here that I think it's very important that whatever
happens in this area, renderers are allowed to apply higher-quality
linebreaking algorithms to documents *without* authors having to opt
in.  Explicitly opting *out* is fine -- just as there will
occasionally be a need for "I want this scaled-up image to be
pixelated", there will occasionally be a need for "I want this text
broken first-fit."  But there are millions of documents out there that
will never get their style sheets upgraded, and we shouldn't prevent
UAs from improving their presentation.

(I didn't like the Adobe proposal for precisely this reason.  It
seemed like a thing where UAs should just _do_ it rather than everyone
having to opt in.)

zw

Received on Thursday, 11 April 2013 02:11:35 UTC