Re: [css3-fonts] font-size-adjust auto issue

On Aug 27, 2013, at 10:42 PM, Jonathan Kew <jfkthame@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 27/8/13 16:20, fantasai wrote:
> > On 08/26/2013 07:59 PM, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> >>
> >> A much more intuitive and useful - for authors - meaning of <auto>
> >> would, I think, be "the aspect value calculated by the UA
> >> for the first available face in the current font-family list"; in
> >> other words, it would never cause any rescaling of the first
> >> available font, but if there is any text that falls back to a later
> >> font in the list (or an arbitrary system font), *that*
> >> font will be adjusted so that its x-height matches the first.
> >
> > Given this definition, I think it's important to know what
> > the computed value would be -- is it 'auto' (so that this
> > recalculates in every element) or is it the resulting metric
> > (so that it inherits as an absolute ratio).
> 
> I think inheriting the resulting metric is the more useful option.
> 
> Although it has been suggested that font-size-adjust is primarily about ensuring legibility (I should go back and re-read the spec to see how it's actually described), I don't actually think that is the primary use case. Its main value is (IMO) in helping to harmonize the apparent visual size of different fonts.
> 
> In an example like
> 
>  <div style="font-family:Times; font-size:24px;">
>    hello
>    <span style="font-family:Verdana">cruel</span>
>    world
>  </div>
> 
> the word in Verdana looks huge in comparison to the surrounding Times. Applying font-size-adjust:auto to the <div> provides an easy way to harmonize the two faces.

I feel like it might be even more intuitive to apply font-size-adjust:auto to the inner element in order to get it to have the same x-height as the outer element. Thus, the thing you apply it to changes, not the child of the thing you apply it to.

Of course, that means you looks the Cyrillic or Greek fallback use case.

Received on Thursday, 29 August 2013 13:48:40 UTC