Re: [css3-fonts] Synthesizing oblique, to which direction in RTL and vertical flow?

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 10:56 AM, John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com> wrote:

> On 03/02/13 10:57 PM, Ambrose LI wrote:
>
>  I might be wrong but I believe this is language dependent. AFAIK in
>> Hebrew the slant would be to the right (i.e., same as LTR scripts);
>> but Arabic and Persian slant to the opposite direction, to the left.
>>
>
> There are variable practices for Hebrew, and the Masterfont foundry in
> Israel even ships some font families with two sets of 'italics', one
> leaning right and one leaning left. Personally, I've generally favoured a
> lean to the right, because it produces a more visually compact style with
> stronger forms (when leaning to the left, the letters dalet and resh become
> attenuated), and because of the precedence of some mediaeval manuscript
> styles that lean to the right.


It sounds like it may be useful to define a font descriptor in @font-family
that allows the user to provide guidance to the UA about which direction
slant should apply when synthesizing oblique.