[css3-writing-modes] simpler values for text-orientation

The behavior of the initial value of the 'text-orientation' property
has changed over time.  It's now basically, "decide the orientation
based on the UTR50 value for the codepoint".  Basically, the user
agent will try and apply a good default.  Authors use non-initial
values to control orientation for a specific text subspan.

Given this, I think it would make more sense to use 'auto' rather than
the current initial value 'mixed'. An 'auto' value implies that the
user agent does its best to choose a good default.  It's something
authors who know CSS are accustomed to and I think it's a natural fit
here. The name 'mixed' communicates very little here and it introduces
yet another new value name that authors need to understand.

The current set of values for 'text-orientation' is also rather large
now, more than is really necessary I think:

text-orientation: mixed | upright | sideways-right | sideways-left | sideways | use-glyph-orientation

I also think we should simply omit 'sideways-left', 'sideways-right'
and 'use-glyph-orientation'.  The 'sideways' value already covers
typical usage based on the 'writing-mode' value - it's
'sideways-right' for right-to-left vertical text runs and
'sideways-left' for left-to-right vertical text runs.  I think it only
adds author confusion to have three different sideways values.

So I would suggest reducing the set of values to:

text-orientation: auto | upright | sideways;

Much, much simpler!

Cheers,

John Daggett

P.S. As for 'use-glyph-orientation', this is already marked at risk so
I would suggest that it simply be omitted unless there's clear
developer interest in supporting this.

Received on Friday, 16 August 2013 02:29:37 UTC